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https://archive.org/details/scripturalevangeOOrock 


SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


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Scriptural Evangelism 





BY 


CARROLL J. ROCKEY 


WITH 


INTRODUCTION 


BY 
JOHN C. SEEGERS, D.D. 


Professor of Practical Theology, Mt. Airy Theological Seminary, 
Philadelphia, Pa., and Chairman of the Committee on Evan- 
gelism of the United Lutheran Church in America 


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PHILADELPHIA 
THE UNITED LUTHERAN PUBLICATION HOUSE 


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CopyricuT, 1925, By 
Tue Boarp OF PUBLICATION OF 
THE UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA 


MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


Dedication 


TO THOSE ACTIVE LAYMEN, 
MEMBERS OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER, 
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA 
WHO THEMSELVES WENT OUT INTO THE STREETS AND 
HIGHWAYS OF THE CITY AND BROUGHT IN MEMBERS, 
WHO ENUMERATED NAMES OF PERSONS WHO THEY 
BELIEVED COULD BE WON, COMPELLING A YOUTHFUL, 
NEWLY ORDAINED MISSIONARY TO SET DOWN THOSE 
NAMES WITH STREET ADDRESSES IN A PROSPECTIVE MEM- 
BERSHIP LIST, THUS INDUCTING THE YOUTHFUL MIS- 
SIONARY IN HIS SMALL MISSION CONGREGATION INTO HIS 
FIRST DUTIES AS PAUL’S CO-LABORING EVANGELIST ; 


AND 


TO THE ACTIVE LAITY, 
MEMBERS OF HOLY TRINITY LUTHERAN CHURCH, 
ELGIN, ILLINOIS, 


WHOSE CONSECRATED LABORS HAVE BEEN A VALUABLE 
ASSET IN THE GROWTH OF THE CONGREGATION, THE 
AUTHOR'S DEVOTED HELPERS AND CO-LABORERS WITH GOD 


IS THIS VOLUME 
DEDICATED 


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FOREWORD 


In the spring of 1920 there was introduced at the 
convention of the Illinois Synod of the United Luth- 
eran Church in America, a resolution calling for some 
clear expositions on the matter of evangelism. This 
resolution was referred to the Executive Board of the 
synod. Before the end of the year the president of the 
synod, through the death of the stalwart Dr. H. A. 
Yarger, had the double duties of a salaried synodical 
president and an executive secretary of the Board of 
Home iMissions and Church Extension, thrust upon 
him. The writer, as secretary of the synod, agreed to 
take over some of the duties pertaining to the work of 
the synod, to lighten the heavy double burden on the 
shoulders of the president, until the synod in regular con- 
vention might elect another president. The matter of 
the resolution on evangelism was one of those duties which 
he assumed. He prepared a set of Theses which are 
found in the printed minutes of the Illinois Synod, 
May, 1921. 

The Theses were referred to the conferences for con- 
sideration and report to the synod the following year. 
In his own conference the author was delegated to pre- 
pare a paper on the question. Any action on the question 
was deferred by the synod until the Committee on Evan- 
gelism of the United Lutheran Church should report to 
the biennial convention of the general body. Another 
meeting of the conference was held and again the author 

yr; 


8 FOREWORD 


of the Theses was appointed to prepare a paper on the 
question. He had also been selected to serve on the com- 
mittee of the general body. One of the urgent questions 
before this committee was the question of literature. Col- 
lecting his accumulation of data, rearranging his material, 
re-writing practically the whole of it, his work has resulted 
in the present volume. | 
The circumstances and authorship naturally give the 
treatment the viewpoint of the theology of the Lutheran 
church. But the writer has endeavored to view the sub- 
jects objectively; he has attempted to abstract himself, 
simply hold things before his gaze for the appraisal of 
the unbiased and unprejudiced mind. He has not at- 
tempted to squelch his theological convictions because no 
convinced writer dare do that; but in matters pertain- 
ing to differences of opinion or judgment rather than 
principle, he has endeavored to eliminate the subjective. 
This is not possible to a perfect degree with any man 
in every case; the personal equation is bound to crop 
up or shine through here and there. But fair-minded 
men can make allowance for differences in judgment 
when they believe the hearts of opposing men are right. 
The book is written for the clergy and laity every- 
where, whatever their persuasion. It is the fond belief 
of the author that these pages contain valuable food for 
thought for any man in any denomination, no matter 
whether the readers hold the author’s position or not. 
Sensible people are molded more by what others may 
think than by what they themselves have always held 
dear. Solid argument based upon principle rather than 
prejudice is worth consideration though it may not carry 
conviction to an opposing mind. The book may carry 


FOREWORD 9 


far more weight within the author’s own household of 
faith than it will elsewhere, for there are fundamental 
differences between the primary viewpoints of Lutherans 
and others. But the book is put out in the fond belief 
that it will stir both thought and action, and in the hope 
that it will accomplish much good for the Kingdom of 
God. 

The author owes a debt of gratitude to the Rev. W. L. 
Hunton, D.D., of the Board of Publication of the United 
Lutheran Church in America, and to the Rev. J. C. 
Seegers, D.D., chairman of the Committee on Evangelism 
of the same ecclesiastical body. The author had submitted 
the manuscript of this work in somewhat briefer form. 
These stanch friends showed faults in the arrangement of 
_ the material, with other weaknesses, and suggested re- 
arrangement of the material and re-casting of a part of 
the contents. The author has followed their suggestions, 
and hereby expresses his heartfelt thanks for the sound 
advice given. He is also indebted to various others, es- 
pecially to the Rev. Paul W. Roth, D.D., of Milwaukee, 
Wis., for germ thoughts which have here been elaborated. 

With the prayer that this volume shall accomplish much 
as an instrument of God for the winning of souls, is 
the book sent forth. 

CARROLL J. ROCKEY. 

Elgin, IIL, 

Advent, 1924. 


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VII. 


VIII. 


IX. 


Pel 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PEP HENIWMEA NING OF UTI VA NUULIZO® soy <liacssssssedevescatnaaccooests 
BARC tL TROT ETN E21) luc gtt cls We sccdvet nical dbsad esto avesvusenan’ 
LE: EL ROGRA Ms OF THER CGT URC HT oss. icasessdcasss.donterversbaare 
Wie REGULAR CATECHETICAT CLASSiNU Kids. 


POMPEO RTT VY CORBY oc, 0, hogs Giessen norte cote Ace csoiareeatbnee notch 


1. Working by List. _ 
2. Reasoning as Paul Reasoned. 


PRETO ELC APPEAL (tee ce uae tees Mela oda 


1. Congregational Evangelism. 
2. The Priesthood of Believers. 
3. Missionary Zeal. 

4. Co-laborers with God. 


hHEeCADULT.CATRCHETICALY GLASS) ee kia, 


1. The Necessity for the Instruction. 
2. The Class in Seminar Session. 
3. Midweek or Sunday Evening Lectures. 


EE ORO Ee BEACH EMG bis cosccsal Sebscosuve ebecee tke ates 


1. “Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus.” 
2. The One Name. 

3. Pericopes and Sermon Series. 
4. Pulpit Exchange. 


EVANGELISM® AND ~ P.VANGELISTS svecsick cletced. stcecs cles chsaoste 


1. Current American Evangelism. 
2. The Paulist Fathers. 


3. Lutheran Tendencies and Accomplishments. 


Bee we es ESE ac) By & apt om pe OY A MO Pe a DEORR CRM So ES 


1. Some Considerations on Method. 
2. Direct-by-mail Advertising. 
3. The Newspaper Paid Space. 





INTRODUCTION 


“The swing of the pendulum” is away from revivalism. 
It is toward evangelism. This fact is evidenced not 
only in the terminology now current, e. g., PERSONAL 
EVANGELISM, PASTORAL EVANGELISM, ED- 
UCATIONAL EVANGELISM, but also in the thought 
of the church as that thought finds expression in definite 
programs issued by the churches. 

In these programs revivalism is given a very small 
place. In most of them it is omitted. 

There is a reason for this. Revivalism, as a system, 
has collapsed. It has proved unsatisfactory. Whatever 
may be said in its favor, the consensus of opinion seems 
to be against it. It is not productive of the best results. 
It is giving place to something more efficient. It is 
yielding to that which is more universally applicable. 
Evangelism has come to the fore. 

The use of the term evangelism, is not a mere shifting 
of words. It is not using a different word, expressive of 
the same thing. There is a marked, and, indeed, an 
essential difference between revivalism and evangelism. 
If we understand the terms, and catch their significance, 
we should say; revivalism is sporadic and spasmodic; 
evangelism is constant and permanent. Revivalism is a 
spurt—a campaign—; evangelism has to do with the 
“abiding effort of the congregation.” Hence there are 
programs covering a period of a year or more. Re- 
vivalism is more or less emotional; evangelism is educa- 

13 


14 INTRODUCTION 


tional, Revivalism bends its efforts towards the gaining 
of recruits, diminishing the crowd outside; evangelism 
endeavors to stop the leaks, prevent losses, anchor those 
within the fold, as well as recruit the forces by gaining 
converts from among the unsaved. Revivalism is a spe- 
cial effort; evangelism represents the steady and constant 
flow of the congregation’s life. It is the congregation 
in action all the year for souls, conserving some, convert- 
ing others; keeping some in Christ, bringing others to’ 
Christ. Revivalism, at times, aims to quicken religious 
life in, and stimulate the religious endeavor of the com- 
munity; evangelism is the expression and manifestation 
of the religious life influencing the community. It aims 
to make the congregation a religious force in the com- 
munity, rather than a religious community within the 
community. Revivalism emphasizes the extraordinary; 
evangelism stresses the regular ministrations of the 
word of life. 

This differentiation, in our judgment, makes evan- 
gelism superior to revivalism. It harmonizes more per- 
fectly with the Church’s program as that program has 
been assigned by Christ, and its execution has been 
made possible by the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. 
It makes emphatic the work of the Church. It makes 
imperative the duty of witness-bearing. It not only says, 
Go ye and preach the Gospel to every creature, but also 
that every creature should, in a definite way, preach the 
Gospel. 

The recognition of the collapse of revivalism has re- 
sulted in the preparation of programs of evangelism by 
all the great bodies within Protestantism. 

An examination of the programs reveals a harmony 


INTRODUCTION 15 


with the spirit of the denomination issuing it. Each 
church has its own program. Evangelism cannot be bor- 
rowed. It must reflect the life and conserve the prin- 
ciples of the particular denomination which will use it. 
It must not ignore the historical background of the 
denomination, much less conflict with the practices which 
have grown out of that history. The features of a pro- 
gram suitable for one denomination will not fit in with 
the program to be used in an entirely different ec- 
clesiastical environment. 

As each church will have its own program, so each 
church will create its own literature. It is no wonder, 
therefore, Lutheran writers are contributing to this de- 
partment. Nor is it surprising that the first book should 
be entitled Scriptural Evangelism. Evangelism must root 
itself in the Word. It must plan for the presentation and 
proclamation and application of the Word. It must be 
evangelical. 

In the present volume, the author, an active and busy 
pastor, writing from a conviction that has grown out of 
an experience, treats the subject from the standpoint of 
Scripture. The treatment is full, comprehensive and 
vigorous. 

The volume should prove very interesting and sug- 
gestive and profitable to all groups in the study of this 
very vital question. We pray God’s blessing upon it. 


JouN C. SEEGERS. 
Mt. Airy, 
12-29-24. 


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Scriptural Evangelism 
CHAPTER I 


THE MEANING OF “EVANGELIZO” 


As soon as the words “evangelism” and “evangelist’’ 
are mentioned the minds of many people turn to the 
professional itinerant and the revival. The first thought 
that comes to mind is the strenuous revivalistic campaign 
covering a period of weeks, with the man who concen- 
trates upon this as a specialist in a specialized sphere. 
The word “revival’’ was an established word in the cur- 
rent language of America before America was settled 
far beyond the Atlantic seaboard, and that established 
word had its own established meaning. The method and 
the meaning became established in America also, with 
the result that evangelism has become closely identified 
with revivalism in the average mind, and the evangelist 
is thought of likewise as the traveling professional, or 
at least the specialist. Current methods long employed 
do tend to imprint certain meanings upon certain words, 
or even to galvanize meaning and method upon the word 
to the result that people take it for granted such a word 
cannot possibly have any other meaning. 

“Evangelize’ is a good New Testament word. So 
good is it that it is indeed fundamental, not only to the 
Christian program, but fundamental to the entire Chris- 
tian economy. So good and so fundamental is it that 
there would be no Christian religion without it. It comes 
from the heart and kernel, from the very inner essence 

17 


Vv 


/ 


18 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


of Christianity. The real meaning of the word as ap- 
plied to Christianity in the New Testament originated 
with the heavenly message of the angels upon the hills 
of Judea on the night that the infant Jesus was born. 
Needless to say, when, the New Testament meaning of 
the word originated, not with the methods or ideas of 
men but with the messages of an. angel host, the New 
Testament meaning of the word carries no such sig- 
nificance as current American revivalism has given it 
nor does it convey any such meaning as the methods 
employed by itinerant professional evangelists have at- 
tached to it. Usage determines the meaning of words. 
But any sort of precision in the use of words demands 
at least some degree of discrimination; good thinking can 
demand no less. Revivalism may be one method of 
evangelism as modern usage gives meaning to the term; 
although this is not the original and real meaning of 
revivalism. But at all events to identify one method 
of evangelism with the whole of evangelism, or to make 
that one method give exclusive meaning to the word, is 
a distortion, a perversion, which precision both in 
language and in thought cannot permit. 

We use the designation “New Testament word” be- 
cause the New Testament was written originally in 
Greek, and “evangelizo” is a Greek word. In actual 
fact it might be better to speak of the Biblical use of 
the word and to call it a Biblical word. For the real, 
original meaning of the word is used in the Old Testa- 
ment Hebrew with some special designations which have 
very specific bearing on its New Testament use, as the 
Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament 
Hebrew, shows. Inasmuch as a great deal of discussion 


THE MEANING OF “EVANGELIZO” 19 


arises from misunderstanding of words, the first duty is 
to define the terms. 

The Hebrew has a word, “basar,” which means to be 
cheerful, joyful, especially on account of good news. 
The primary meaning of the word seems to have origi- ,~ 
nated through the beauty and brightness of the human 
countenance when cheerful and joyful in contrast to the 
dour visage of the angry and disappointed, or the fallen 
face of the sorrowful. One of the conjugated forms of 
this Hebrew word is “bissar,” which means to cheer with 
glad tidings, to bring glad tidings or to announce good 
news. In Psalm 40:10 the word is used with reference 
to the Messiah’s proclamation of the faithfulness and 
the salvation of God; in Psalm 96:2 to show forth the 
salvation of the Lord from day to day. Isaiah uses it 
particularly with reference to the Messianic blessings. 
In Chapter 40:9, immediately succeeding the prophecy 
of John the Baptist as the herald of the Lord, we find 
the words: “O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee 
up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest 
good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength.” In 52:7 
Isaiah uses a derived form of the word in the famous 
passage: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet 
of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; 
that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth sal- 
vation.” In Isaiah 60:6 the word is used again with 
reference to Gentile praise of God. In 61:1 the word 
is used in the passage quoted by Christ in the synagogue 
at Nazareth and there applied to Himself as the fulfill- 
ment of it (Luke 4:16-32). The Hebrew participial 
derivative “‘mebasser”’ is used with reference to the mes- 
senger who brings the good tidings. This is used es- 


20 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


pecially in Isaiah 52:7 quoted above, and its Greek 
equivalent is used in the Messianic self-application of 
Christ in Luke 4:16-32 from Isaiah 61:1. In all of 
these uses of the Hebrew word as referring to the good 
tidings of the total Messianic salvation, the Hebrew 
verb becomes “evangelizo,” its noun derivative, the good 
tidings themselves, becomes “evangelion,” and the bringer 
of the good tidings, the “mebasser,’’ becomes “evan- 
gelistes,’ in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old 
Testament. 

We need not be surprised, then, that the song of the 
angels on Judea’s hills announcing the birth of the Saviour 
should have its action and content expressed through the 
word “evangelizo.” The word expressed those good 
tidings as they were foreseen and prophesied by Isaiah; 
the same word links Isaiah’s prophecy with the actual 
fulfillment. If in the Septuagint translation of the Old 
Testament Hebrew into Greek, the good tidings of sal- 
vation through the coming Messianic deliverer became 
an “evangelion,” if the messenger who should carry 
these good tidings became an “evangelistes,’ and if the 
action of bringing became an “evangelizo,” then con- 
sistently enough in the New Testament, likewise written 
in Greek, the same words would be used to designate the 
same things. 

There is no need here, in a popular treatise written 
largely for the general reader, to deal with the shades 
of meaning in different forms of the word, with its con- 
jugations and derivatives, moods and tenses, as they are 
found in the New Testament. Suffice it to say that 
when, in the Old Testament the Hebrew word trans- 
lated into some form of “evangelizo” always refers to 


THE MEANING OF “EVANGELIZO” Pak 


Messianic deliverance, certainly the New Testament, as 
the fulfillment and completion of the Old, would have its 
pages filled with various forms of the word. In one 
form or another the word runs through the New Testa- 
ment from Matthew to Revelation. In every case the 
word deals with the bringing of glad tidings of salvation 
through Jesus the Messiah, with the blessings of faith 
in Christ Jesus, or with the Kingdom of God in Christ 
whether among Jews or Gentiles. Our Lord used the 
word at various times with reference to Himself, His 
relation to God, and to the kingdom. After His death 
His followers used the word in the same sense about 
Him. The noun derivative, “evangelion,” whether used 
by Himself, by the disciples, or by the apostle Paul in 
his epistles, centered in the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. 
As the messianic rank of Jesus was proved from His 
words, His deeds, His death, His resurrection, as the 
real meaning of the Old Testament cleared through the 
enlightenment of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, so 
the content of the life and death and resurrection of 
Christ as the world’s Redeemer from sin became 
the “evangelion” heralded alike to Jew and Gentile. 
When the narratives of the life of Christ came 
to be written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, 
these written records were designated severally as 
the “evangelion” of their respective authors. The ser- 
mons of Simon Peter in Jerusalem which converted 
large numbers were an “evangelizo”; the work of Simon 
Peter upon Cornelius, the centurion, and the labors of 
Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch, were likewise an 
“evangelizo.” The preaching of the disciples and of 
such missionaries as Paul, whether in the synagogues or 


22 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


upon Mars Hill before crowds, or by presentation to a 
lone individual jailor, was all an “evangelizo.” All of 
these were such because they presented the glad tidings 
of salvation through Christ Jesus and instructed men in 
the things that pertained to that salvation. Numbers did 
not count; situation or circumstances did not count; oral 
- word or written record made no distinction; there was 
no inner difference between the speech of a humanly 
living Jesus talking about Himself and the spoken word 
or written record about Him after His ascension. It 
was wholly and solely a matter of the proclamation of 
the saving grace of God prophesied, manifested, and 
pledged in and through a crucified, risen, and ascended 
messianic Christ. The only point was the content of the 
message. 

In some of the languages of Europe the Greek word 
“evangelion” was taken over almost bodily with its mean- 
ing unimpaired, and what changes the word has suffered 
by its migrations have not made it a stranger to its 
origin. There is such a close similarity between “evan- 
gelium” and “evangelion” that many a German or Scan- 
dinavian who knows nothing of Greek will see the 
similarity and know the meaning of the word in the 
original tongue. In these languages the first four books 
of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, 
are designated “evangelium” in the Bibles, and the “evan- 
gelium” is read in the churches and announced as such. 

But in the English language the word has changed. 
We still have the word “evangel’’ and the origin of it is 
still apparent in the frequent prefix of the adjective 
“glad” before it. We also have the word “evangelical” 
as a word descriptive of the Lutheran Church originating 


THE MEANING OF “EVANGELIZO” 23 


in Germany. But because of the change many of the 
sons of Martin Luther fail to recognize the meaning of 
the word. In the old Anglo-Saxon the narratives of the 
life of Jesus as given by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, 
were called the “Godspell’” which really meant the “God- 
story.’ The word “Godspell” as “God-story” lost the 
“d” and then the final “1,” and from the old “Anglo- 
Saxon “Godspell” as “God-story” we now have the word 
“Gospel.” The word “evangelion” from the Greek is not 
used nor is the latinized “evangelium” found in north- 
ern Europe; the anglicized “gospel” from ‘“‘Godspell” as 
“God-story” is used universally in Bible, hymn book and 
common speech. 

It is just possible that much of the ignorance of the 
real meaning of the words “evangelize” and “evangelist” 
arises from a previous ignorance of the history of the 
word “gospel.” Were the meaning and the history of the 
word “gospel” known, the meaning of its New Testa- 
ment grand-parent would be grasped in a moment. From 
all this it must be plain that to evangelize means to 
“gospelize’”’ and to be an evangelist means to be a “gos- 
pelizer.”’ Since the Gospel is the “God-story” of the 
New Testament with all its background in the Old 
Testament, to gospelize can mean nothing other than to 
set forth the story of the Christ as the crucified, risen 
Son of God, the Saviour of mankind. Inasmuch as 
one of the specific meanings of the Greek “evangelizo” 
is to instruct men concerning the things that pertain to” 
Christian salvation, it must be plain that teaching God’s 
plan of redemption in Christ to children is one impor- 
tant method of gospelizing. It must be plain again that 
a teaching, instructing ministry is likewise a gospelizing 


24 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


ministry, whether those taught be old or young. It also 
must be clear that any person well versed in the Scrip- 
tures can and should be an evangelist, a gospelizer. Just 
as plain must it be that gospelizing can be done into the 
ear of one person as well as of one hundred or one thou- 
sand. As Simon Peter and others gospelized Jews who 
believed in Jehovah but not in Christ as the Messiah, so 
must the gospelizing process be exercised upon those who 
have no faith in the redemption of Christ Jesus; and as 
Simon Peter gospelized a Roman centurion, Philip an 
Ethiopian, and Paul the Gentiles, so must those who 
know not God be gospelized. In sum total it must be 
very plain that the meaning of the words “evangelize” 
and “evangelist” can never be given any restricted mean- 
ing as has been given to it in America, nor again can its 
meaning be identified with revivalism. The real meaning 
of the words, as carried from their New Testament 
originals, is deep, broad, and comprehensive. 

But above all other meanings this one meaning must 
stand out clearly: it must be evident that the truth- 
content of the Scripture is the one great element in the 
evangelizing or gospelizing process. For “evangelizo” 
with its correlated terms has meaning only when the 
real, religious truth of Christ as the propitiation for sin, 
as the self-sacrificed second person of the Trinity, gives 
meaning to it. Mormon missionaries and Christian 
Science lecturers are propagandists, but not evangelists 
in the New Testament meaning of the term. When the 
truth as it is in Christ Jesus is not presented or is not 
presented properly in its full relations, there is no New 
Testament evangelism. To preach anything and every- 
thing may be whatever it may be, but it is not gospelizing. 


THE MEANING OF “EVANGELIZO” fe 


The use of the word in the Old Testament as referring 
to the messianic deliverer, the use of the word in the 
New Testament as referring to Him in His actual life 
and work as the Redeemer, this use must carry the 
meaning of the word in its own full import. For 
“evangelizo” is a Bible word, and that is an unwarranted 
distortion or perversion which gives to it any meaning 
which its Biblical use cannot sanction. If usage is to de- 
termine the meaning of words, then by all means let the 
original usage of the word, that usage which has made the 
word current in the languages of the earth and has given 
it to men, be the usage which shall give it meaning now. 
As the highest, nay, even the sole element, in the Biblical 
use of the term, was the truth-content or the truth that was 
to be preached or taught, so let that truth-content de- 
termine its meaning at the present time; and as this 
Biblical word would never exist at all in a religious sense 
or application without the redemption of Christ which 
gave it birth, so may it be plain that without the truth 
as it is in Christ Jesus there can be no such thing as 
evangelism. Anything less or other is a paradox! 


CHAPTER II 
Seconp Timotuy 4:5 


In the opening verses of the fourth chapter of Paul’s 
second letter to Timothy we read these words: “I charge 
thee, therefore, before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ 
who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing 
and his kingdom: preach the Word, be instant in sea- 
son and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all 
long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will come 
when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their 
own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having 
itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from 
the truth and shall be turned unto fables. But watch 
thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an 
evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.” 

It is well in this as in all other cases to take the text 
with and in its context rather than to separate it. The 
command of Paul to Timothy to do the work of an 
evangelist is a command which still stands; it applies 
now as it did then. But if it would be understood 
properly it must be considered in its connection, not away 
from nor independent of its relationship. . 

The fifth verse: “do thou the work of an evangelist” 
is a passage which has been quoted a great deal to justify 
the attitudes and labors of various individuals. But 
when this small portion of one verse is rooted out of its 
context it has no crystal-clear meaning except that given 

26 


SECOND TIMOTHY 4:5 27 


it by the inner meaning of the word “evangelist” in the 
original Greek. Even so, since the original meaning of 
the word as expressed in the New Testament Greek has 
been distorted so woefully, the passage must be studied 
in its entirety if it would be understood correctly. That 
small portion of the fifth verse is a very emphatic com- 
mand or exhortation which means what it says; the man 
of God shall do the work of an evangelist. But the gen- 
eral terms and conditions of that evangelizing are de- 
lineated in the other parts of the context, and the real 
foundations of the evangelizing are given in all the pre- 
ceding four verses. Indeed, the fifth verse is nothing 
other than a summary of the four verses that precede; 
at most it is nothing more than a climactic appea! based 
upon them. 

The very opening of the entire injunction is the key to 
the whole of it. Says Paul: “I charge thee before God 
anoernemiord: Jesus Christe)! . preach the Word.” 
Upon this hinges the remainder. To the Romans he 
wrote that he was not ashamed of the Gospel because it 
was the power of God unto salvation to everyone that 
believeth. To these same Romans he rendered the 
argument: “How then, shall they call upon him in whom 
they have not believed? And how shall they believe in 
him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they 
hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach 
except they be sent?” His conclusive deduction is this: 
“So then, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the 
Word.” In this his whole contention is that the Word 
of God must be preached for without the preaching of 
the Word the world would remain in ignorance and there 
would be no faith. To the Ephesians he stated plainly 


28 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


that by grace they were saved through faith, and that 
not of themselves; pointedly he adds: “It is the gift of 
God.” To the Hebrews his doctrine was stated just as 
plainly: “For the Word of God is quick and powerful, 
and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to 
the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints 
and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and in- 
tents of the heart.’”’ All this was the work and the power 
of that mighty Word, and the faith which came from 
the hearing of it was the gift of God. 

From all this it is apparent that Paul’s entire charge 
to Timothy hinged upon its opening key. Timothy was 
to preach the Word, to be instant in season and out of 
season in preaching that Word; to preach that Word even 
though perverted individuals with ears itching to hear 
some doctored statements that tickled their mental 
palates, cried down his truth; to preach that Word 
solidly and completely in the avowed foreknowledge, and 
for the specific reason, that people with itching ears would 
disagree with it and would hold up their own adulterated 
beliefs against it. That Word was to be his message, 
that Word and none other, for Paul’s use of the word 
“evangelize” means nothing but the glad tidings of great 
joy that the world had a Saviour in Christ Jesus; and 
Timothy, as an evangelist, was to be a proclaimer of that 
truth. 

It must be evident also, that Paul’s teachings on the 
power of that Word, gathered from his other letters as 
we are abundantly able to gather it now, lodged the 
power to convert the hearts of men within that Word 
itself ; Timothy’s duty was to lodge that Word into the 
ears and hearts of his hearers. That powerful Word 


SECOND TIMOTHY 4:5 29 


which was the power of God unto salvation would do its 
own work; it was capable of penetrating into the inner 
recesses of man’s consciousness; it had the power to 
sear the conscience and to produce repentance; it was the 
means by which faith, as a gift of God, was given unto 
man. It was the medium, the mediating means, the 
channel of faith and the channel of God’s grace; it was 
the giver of faith and the power for conversion. It was 
God’s means, tool, and instrument for the doing of God’s 
work; and the evangelist, the human instrument or mouth- 
piece, was to be a watchful, perserving, faithful pro- 
claimer of that all-powerful Word. Itching ears would 
be against him; the preaching would be a stumbling- 
block to some, and foolishness to others; but as Timothy 
was to be an evangelist, as his very title ‘“evangelistes,” 
meant the proclaiming of the glad tidings of salvation in 
Jehovah’s Son, and as the Word to be preached was the 
Word of God as it centered in that son, so must Timothy 
ever be a faithful steward of the preaching of that self- 
working Word. Only by that means would he be an 
evangelist, and only by that means would he make full 
proof of his ministry. 

When II Timothy 4:5 is taken with the context, not 
abstracted from or taken out of its setting, it is evident 
that the truth-content of the Scripture is the one great 
element in the doing of the work of an evangelist. So 
highly does Paul esteem the Word and its purity as the 
message of the evangelist that he gives specific injunc- 
tions regarding that purity. Timothy was enjoined to 
guard that truth closely and to proclaim it in the face of 
all perversions of itself or in deluded people. He was 
instructed to reprove, to rebuke its perversions and dis- 


30 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


tortions, to exhort with long-suffering patience and doc- 
trine. That doctrine is specific and is specifically em- 
phasized. As Paul had found Timothy, so evidently 
Paul and others of the apostles had instructed Timothy 
for the ministry. Paul’s doctrines do not vary in the 
least from those of all the others, though he elaborates 
where others do not. His doctrines on Jesus Christ as 
the Messiah of the Old Testament are reasoned out as 
clear as day. His doctrine on the Word of God has 
been given in the last few pages above. His emphasis 
on the doctrine and on the necessity of maintaining sound 
doctrine stands out clearly in the third and fourth verses 
of the injunction where he states that the time will come 
when sound doctrine will not be endured but fables will 
be encouraged. His doctrine co-incided with that con- 
veyed in the message of the angels on the night of Jesus’ 
birth; his doctrine centered in the objective facts sur- 
rounding the messianic Christ. For the Christ was the 
second Adam. Abel’s righteous sacrifice of blood pre- 
saged the final sacrifice of blood on Calvary. The 
covenant with Abraham and the other patriarchs was a 
dispensation purposely and definitely pre-arranged by 
Jehovah as a basal foundation for that divine self-sac- 
rifice on Golgotha. So doctrinal is Paul that he has been 
blithely described as the New Testament doctrinaire by 
those who have looked askance at him. But as the Chris- 
tian system of doctrine centering in Christ has wide 
outreach and far-reaching ramifications, all finally coming 
back to the center as they radiate from Him, so does 
Paul’s doctrine converge and focus, in all its arguments, 
in that one divine center. Paul’s doctrine is the doctrine 
connotated by the word “evangelizo,” the doctrine of glad 


SECOND TIMOTHY 4:5 31 


tidings of great joy through the coming of a Saviour, 
which is Christ Jesus. 

This is the doctrine which the evangelist should use 
and with which he should exhort. He could not be a 
mere exhorter dealing in thundering law, in subjective 
appeals, in pious platitudes, or in tearful pleadings. He 
could not ladle out watery, colorless, indefinite, unspecific 
things which, because of either their undefined related- 
ness or lack of it, might be “perfectly true, perfectly 
general, absolutely meaningless.” Paul knew well that 
any mere exhorter with an empty wordiness will never 
appeal to any thinking man because he himself had once 
been called a babbler by the sophisticated intelligentsia of 
Greece. Through his contacts with the Greek philosophy 
which was found in all centers of culture everywhere 
throughout the then-known world, Paul knew the value 
of solid matter to the thinking mind; through these same 
contacts he knew the wild speculations to which the mind 
was given. In contrast to these he knew the truth as 
Jehovah had given it in Christ Jesus. He had con- 
fronted those same Athenians who had gathered daily 
in the market-places merely to hear or relate some new 
thing; he had also been transported to the third heaven 
wherein he had received revelations which tongue was 
not adequate to utter. Small wonder that his strong 
mind and wholesome soul revered the truth of God or 
that he directed the evangelizer to exhort with doctrine; 
small wonder that he stated the time would come when 
sound doctrine would not be endured but that itching 
mental palates would turn to those who administered 
flatteringly palatable mental food. Amid all the diver- 
sities of human thought among Jews and Gentiles, with 


32 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


Greek mythologies and cosmologies and cosmogonies, plus 
the tendency to fuse Jewish revelation with Greek 
speculation, and to spice this pseudo-theological mixture 
with heathen orgies, Paul knew the truth of God must 
stand and that the man of God must stand unperturbed 
and unwavering with it. Small wonder that he tells 
Timothy to watch in all things, which means to be sober, 
temperate, confident, and well-poised in the possession 
and administration of his certain, God-given truth, as 
Timothy would wallow through a world filled with such 
a pot-pourri of heterogeneous religionism. 

In the face of all this it must be clear that no babe or 
theological fledgling can seize that mere part-verse as a 
call from God to dash out pell-mell or helter-skelter as 
a fervid exhorter. He must have a full grasp of the 
truth before he can preach it, or before he has any moral 
license to go forth in breezy confidence as a specially 
designated son of Paul, a specialist at that. In Acts 
18: 24-28 we read of Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew, that 
he was an eloquent man, mighty in the Scriptures, fervent 
in the spirit, and that he essayed to speak boldly in the 
synagogues. But Aquila and Priscilla heard him and 
saw his deficiencies; he had been instructed in the Lord 
to some small degree but he knew only the baptism of 
John. His sheer fervency of spirit was not credential 
sufficient to warrant his appearance in a Jewish synagogue 
with a fractional theology. Aquila and Priscilla took 
him in hand, expounded the way of God to him more 
perfectly, and recommended him to the other disciples 
after he had been taught properly. Then we read the 
sequel : “he helped them much who had believed by grace, 


SECOND TIMOTHY 4:5 33 


for he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, 
showing by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ.” 

This doctrine of redemption in Christ Jesus must be 
the message of the evangelist; but he must believe it 
firmly in his own heart that he may preach it with cer- 
tainty and authority. That full gospel is his warrant for 
preaching and his credential for public appearance in 
behalf of it. Apollos is with us still, sometimes minus 
the eloquence, frequently minus the mightiness in the 
full consistency of a whole, completely rounded gospel. 
Who has not wandered into the tents and halls or listened 
to the soap-box exhorter on the streets only to hear a 
gospel fearfully and wonderfully mis-made! The fer- 
vency of spirit exists and is commendable but the doc- 
trine stops somewhere parallel to the baptism of John, 
or, as is the case with one crusading evangelistic organiza- 
tion, stops with no baptism at all. Paul had well-defined 
ideas about the organized church and the Kingdom of 
God; he speaks much of the “ecclesia” and the “‘basileia.”’ 
Who has not heard the tent, hall, or soap-box extolled 
at the expense of the brick building on the corner, and 
the organization known as the “communion of saints” 
condemned; or who has not heard the well-schooled, well- 
poised ministry derided in terms of the gutter! Or who 
has not heard the itinerant professional exalt himself as 
a real evangelist as over against the regular ministry who 
are, by implication at least, not real evangelists at all, 
merely static shepherds of a sleeping fold, or, to change 
the figure, non-militant captains beneath the mighty gen- 
eral to hold the fort until he comes or after he is gone. 
All of these originate because that small part-verse is 
rooted out of its context, because it is misconstrued 


34 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


through not being taken with the sum total of other 
Scripture or with Paul’s other statements in a complete 
analogy of faith. When it is rooted out of its context 
or other Scripture it results in the unbalancing of spiritual 
things; it is seized upon as sufficient warrant and 
credential for the preaching of an unbalanced gospel as 
Apollos did so long ago. But when it is left in its set- 
ting of context and analogous Scripture it simply means 
that the man of the ministry shall do the work of an 
evangelist because he is Christ’s evangelist, and he shall 
do his sum total work as an approved workman of God. 
He shall stick to his gospelizing with a persevering 
fidelity. 


CHAPTER iit 
THE PROGRAM OF THE CHURCH 


The Scriptures teach very plainly that the will of God 
is that “God desireth not the death of a sinner but that 
he shall turn from his wickedness and live.” This is the 
whole tenor of Scripture from beginning to end; this is 
its purpose. This is the whole economy of God as ap- 
plied to the human soul. It must be the life program of 
every man who goes into the ministry as it must be the 
faith program of every Christian the world over. It 
must be the purpose of the church as it was the purpose 
of God in founding the church. It must be the program 
of the church. 

For Christ did not come into the world to dabble into 
the affairs of men a little here and a little there, reform 
them outwardly, merely teach them how to live a moral 
life and die an unruffled death. The mind of Jesus 
was bent upon sin, regeneration, redemption, sanctifica- 
tion, inward grace, salvation, all of these to have Him 
as their foundation and center. This was the mind of 
Jesus and His mind must be the mind of the church. 
The Saviour’s program must be the church’s program. 


In the light of this the duty of the church is plain. She \/ 


must center thought and effort on sin, regeneration, re- 

demption, sanctification, salvation, with all that these may 

include or imply. The saving Christ must be the center 

of her life and doctrine. The church is here to fulfill 
do 


36 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


the will of God toward men, to do His work. The work 
of the Church is to save, and her program must be bent 
to her work. There can be no saving without preaching 
the Gospel for “faith cometh by hearing and hearing by 
the Word.” 

Hence, when the program of the Church is designated 
as the necessary work of evangelizing, that program 
must be the program of the ministry as the work of 
those who have given themselves specifically to the Lord 
as laborers in His vineyard and have been set apart to 
that work by the ordination of the Church; it must be the 
program of the laity because they are Christians in 
faith, the children of God, consecrated to Him in per- 
sonal life; it must then, necessarily be the program of 
the organized Church because it is, perforce, the pro- 
gram of the Church’s divine founder and of the Church’s 
constituent elements and individual units. Inasmuch 
as real faith shows and proves itself by its works, every 
Christian, of whatever rank or station, will be a mis- 
sionary for the Kingdom. The men of the ministry must 
make it their outstanding duty because they are the key- 
men to the situation. The congregation must make 
evangelizing a prime spiritual duty because it is the local 
geographical unit which must evangelize its own com- 
munity. The organized church must bend herself to the 
duty with specific plan and well-defined program because 
at times everybody’s business becomes nobody’s business 
and it is left undone because it is undirected, unman- 
aged, left to shift and drift for itself or to take care of 
itself as best it may. 

That church body which does not bend itself in solid 
fashion to the work of evangelizing is not worthy of its 


THE PROGRAM OF THE CHURCH 37 


name. When the Church lets the first and foremost, 
the primary and most outstanding, fundamental duty of 
all duties—the inspiration, the guidance and the further- 
ance, of clerical, congregational, synodical evangelism, to 
any random, hit-or-miss, helter-skelter, do-or-leave-un- 
done program, she is most emphatically not fulfilling the 
very purpose for which she was established on earth. God 
does nothing at random and the Church can do no better 
than to follow her Lord. That purpose dare not be 
forgotten. The mind and the authoritative powers of 
the Church must be concentrated upon that purpose in 
definite exercise of will, and the guiding authority of the 
Church must hold the attention and will of every member 
upon evangelizing as the charter of the Church’s life. 

The Church must have a program. The work of the} 
Kingdom is the greatest thing on earth. So important is, 
the King’s business that it cannot be left to mere spurts.) 
whims or caprices, to any random, hit-or-miss incidental 
or half-hearted effort. Evangelism must be perennial, 
constant. The duty is plain; the ways to do it must be 
made plain if they are not so now, that the work be 
done and that it be done definitely, decently and in order. 
The zeal for the work must be inculcated as an ever- 
present factor and a prime motive. Ezekiel’s Valley of 
dry bones is not merely an ancient Mesopotamian pro- 
phetic dream and never was; it is a twentieth century 
reality. In point of fact the Church may do any one of 
five things. She may deny her redeeming Lord, turn 
her back upon His pleading Cross and lose her precious 
heritage. She may become indifferent, lukewarm, and 
languish, until she becomes literally an offense to the 
Lord. She may sacramentalize for the sake of sac- 


38 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


ramentalism per se and die because she becomes a piece 
of dead orthodoxy. She may spiritualize and etherealize 
until she loses all her objective truth, all her objective 
facts and foundations, and spins out her emotional, sub- 
jective self into so fine a thread that she dissolves into 
ethereal nothingness. Or she may evangelize, fulfill the 
mind of Christ, and thrive like the cedars of Lebanon. 
For when she does the latter, she must operate with a 
full Gospel as an absolute sine qua non. Operating with 
a full Gospel in the meaning of the word “evangelizo”’ 
she must hold to a real Christ. Holding to a real Gospel 
with a real, redeeming, atoning Christ, she feeds upon 
solid meat, and her faith as well as her body, is bound 
to grow. 


CHA PRTERGEY 
THE CATECHETICAL CLASS 


In Deut. 6: 4-9 we read the following inspiring words: 
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and 
thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these 
words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine 
heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy 
children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine 
house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when 
thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou 
shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they 
shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt 
write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy 
gates.” 

That command for long centuries was literally fulfilled. 
“Education begins in the home. It is imparted by in- 
fluence and example, before it comes by teaching; it is 
acquired by what is seen and heard before it is laboriously 
learned from books; its real object becomes instinctively 
felt before its goal is consciously sought. What Jewish 
fathers and mothers were; what they felt towards their 
children; and with what reverence, affection, and care 
the latter returned what they had received, is known to 
every close student of the Old Testament. From the 
first days of its existence, a religious atmosphere sur- 
rounded the child of Jewish parents. The first wish 

39 


ye 


L- 


ae 


40 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


expressed for the child was that, as he had been joined 
to the covenant, so it might also be to him in regard to 
the Torah, the law, and to the Chuppah and to good 
works; in other words that he might live godly, soberly, 
and righteously in this present world—a holy, happy, 
and God-devoted life.’” 

The devout Jew carried out the instructions of Jehovah 
punctiliously. The father was bound to teach his son. 
“To impart to the child knowledge of the Torah con- 
ferred as great spiritual distinction as if a man had re- 
ceived the law itself on Mt. Horeb. Every other en- 
gagement, even the necessary meal, should give place to 
this paramount duty. That man who had sons but failed 
to bring them up in the knowledge of the law was con- 
sidered profane and vulgar, an Am-ha-arets. Directly 
the child learned to speak, his religious instruction was 
to begin—no doubt with such verses of Holy Scripture 
as composed that part of the Jewish liturgy which an- 
swers to our creed.” The verses cited from Deuteronymy 
were inscribed upon a piece of parchment and were hung 
upon the door-posts inside the house as God had com- 
manded. On the outside cover of the parchment was 
written the name of the Most High; as each devout fol- 
lower of Jehovah came or went that Holy Name was 
touched with the fingers and then the fingers that had 
come in contact with the Holy Name were kissed. The 
presence of and the reverence for the Mezuzah, that 
parchment hung just inside the door, was a powerful 
urge to the education of the children at an early age by 
the parents within the home. It symbolized the divine 


*Edersheim, “Life and Times of Jesus,’ Vol. I, II, IX, with 
citations from Josephus. 


THE REGULAR CATEGHETICAL: CLASS 41 


guard over Israel’s homes, the visible emblem of the 
joyous hymn: “The Lord shall preserve thy going out 
and thy coming in, from this time forth and even for- 
evermore.” So well was this home instruction followed 
that in the mixed-marriage homes of Lois and Eunice 
in the far-off dispersion, whose son and grand-son, the 
child of a Gentile father and reared in a distant land 
where likely there was not even a synagogue much less 
a Jewish school, had from an infant known the Holy 
Scriptures. “It was indeed, no idle boast that the Jews 
were from their swaddling-clothes trained to recognize 
God as their father and as the maker of the world; that, 
having been taught the knowledge of the laws from 
earliest youth, they bore in their souls the image of the 
commandments; that from their earliest consciousness 
they learned the laws so as to have them, as it were, en- 
graven upon the soul.’” 

In addition to this home training given by the parents 
in obedience to Deut. 6: 4-9 with the symbolic Mezuzah 
containing the verses hanging upon the doorpost, the 
Jewish child was sent to school at an early age. The 
schools were maintained in connection with the syna- 
gogues, usually with the Chazzan or officer of the syna- 
gogue in charge. The respect for the law itself, combined 
with the religious zeal of having that law taught to the 
children, raised the office of teacher to high esteem in 
Israel. Roughly speaking, up to the age of ten years 
the Bible exclusively was the textbook. The law was 
memorized and thoroughly digested; the psalms as the 


Various quotations from Edersheim, “Life and Times of 
Jesus,” or from Philo and Josephus cited by Edersheim, Vol. I, 
Book II, Chapter IX. 


42 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


choral-songs of worship were memorized also; and the 
general regulations of worship with the ordinances of 
Jehovah were taught by precept and example. Leviticus 
came first; then the other four books of Moses; then 
portions of the prophets and the sacred writings, of 
which latter the psalms constituted the larger part. After 
the age of ten the Mishnah or traditional law furnished 
the text and parts of curriculum; after the age of fifteen 
the academies taught by the rabbis could be entered 
by the promising youth, that he might know the theo- 
logical discussions which formed so large a part of the 
Jewish religious and official life in the later centuries. 
These descriptions of the parental training and the 
home atmosphere, with the added training in the syna- 
gogue schools, are given for a specific purpose. At the 
present time there are few homes where religious train- 
ing is given to much extent. Furthermore, there are few 
homes wherein the religious atmosphere approaches any- 
thing nearly that demanded. by consistent religion. The 
command given in Deut. 6:4-9 is as binding upon the 
spiritual Gentile children of Abraham as it was upon 
the ancient Jew; but despite the greater, finer content of 
truth that might be taught through the actual coming of 
that Messiah whose advent was merely foreshadowed in 
the ancient worship, the present day witnesses the sad 
fact that little religious training is given in the home. 
And as religious training schools we have the Sunday 
school and the regular catechetical class, both of them 
poor substitutes for the solid training given by the Mosaic 
Jew. For the Sunday Bible school is merely voluntary, 
has a pitiably brief period for study separated by six 
days at that, frequently has a poor corps of teachers 


THE REGULAR’ CATECHETICAL: CLASS 43 


weak in one direction or another. The catechetical class 
is subject to the same conditions of time-periods for 
study. Both are weak in that they do not receive the 
proper moral backing of the people in the homes. Peo- 
ple are guilty in two directions; first, they have shunted 
their own personal, parental duty to the shoulders of 
outsiders; second, they give such faint-hearted backing 
to those upon whom they have shifted their respon- 
sibility that Sunday school attendance is poor, behavior 
is worse, and the pastor of the congregation has difficulty 
in getting proper co-operation from many homes. The 
catechumens come poorly prepared at times and two years 
is considered a very lengthy course of instruction. 

In actual fact the Sunday Bible school, the church 
school and catechetical class ought to be additions to the 
home instruction, never substitutes for it. The weakness 
here is not in the catechetical class, with which we will 
deal; the weakness lies in the home which gives no re- 
ligious training of its own, and which usually maintains 
no family altar. However, homes are pretty much alike 
throughout the United States. So far as family altars 
are concerned there are more of them in the homes of 
the later immigrants from Northern Europe than may 


be found in any other one class of inhabitants. The 


majority of these happen to belong to the Lutheran 
Church. If our own homes are as weak as they are, 
the homes of others are the same. Beyond the Lutheran 
and the Romish communions, with the Episcopal a good 
third, modern Christianity witnesses the sad fact that 
there is little if any catechetical instruction given to the 
Church’s children. The fundamentals of Christian faith 
are not taught even by the pastor or by a parish school 


L—- 


44 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


teacher, much less by the parents or other authorities. 
The entire situation as it stands is a sad commentary 
upon the foundations for religion as we find them now, 
and upon the portent they hold for the religious stability 
of the future. 

In the light of this condition the regular catechefical 
class must be maintained with greater solidity than ever 
as an evangelizing agency. If this statement sounds 
strange to some ears it is simply another proof that the 
meaning of the word evangelism has been sadly mis- 
construed, and, what is worse, that the thinking of some 
men has undergone some peculiar twisting. For, in the 
first place, one of the specific meanings of the word 
“evangelizo” is the instruction of men in the things that 
pertain to Christian salvation, which can mean only that 
the foundation for the glad tidings, the way, the method, 
the manner of their coming, and their purpose with their 
final consummation, must be given as further, more 
detailed instruction; and in the second place, even if 
evangelism did not include catechetical instruction as the 
meaning of the New Testament word warrants, the wis- 
dom of the children of light should be at least as wise 
in their day and generation as the children of darkness. 
The wisdom of the world decrees that an ounce of pre- 
vention is worth a pound of cure, and that a stitch in time 
saves nine. As the twig is bent the tree will grow. Yet 
portions of modern Christianity decry the trite, staid, old 
catechetical class as an outworn thing to be cast away 
because forsooth, doctrinal Christianity is taboo at the 
best, and at the least should never be taught to children. 
So the children should be left to grow up to choose ac- 
cording to their own desires and preferences, never forced 


THE REGULAR CATECHETICAL CLASS 45 


into a certain religious mold by external authority. The 
result is that many of them never choose, and those who 
do, usually are pointed for a decision day upon which 
occasion they choose the faith of their fathers anyway, 
and might as well or better, have been trained solidly 
and purposely in that faith as best they might. 

However, the New Testament “evangelizo” has its 
own definite, specific meaning, and that meaning cannot 
be changed by the whim or caprice of men. The specific 
meaning with regard to instruction in the things that 
pertain to salvation has a fine ground in Scripture also. 

_Religion, like all other things, should be taught, must be 
taught. Mathematics must be taught, writing must be 
taught; language too, to be complete and correct, must 
be taught. If the child is to be a well equipped citizen 
of the land other branches of knowledge must be taught 
also. If these other things must be taught there is no 
reason why religion should not be taught as well. He 
who is not taught stands a good chance of growing up 
in ignorance or gathering mere fragmentary knowledge 
piecemeal by experience against heavy odds in a period 
of time all out of proportion to that required in the 
learning years. In youth the mind is plastic, too, and 
the bulk of fundamental knowledge gained is gained in 
those years wherein the mind can absorb readily. He 
who would maintain that specific religious instruction 
should not be given to children is standing upon weak 
and specious ground. The command of Jehovah is 
against him; the increase in wisdom and in stature of 
Jesus is against him; the growth in grace and growth 
in knowledge enjoined by Paul is against him; the facts 
of everyday life as shown by knowledge in other spheres 


46 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


is against him; the facts of pedagogical psychology are 
against him; the large numbers of those really left to 
choose their own form or preference of religion and 
never choose any at all, are against him. 

There is neither need nor disposition here to debate 
the empirical sense psychology of Locke’s tabula rasa. 
In point of fact children are born into the world with- 
out any specific knowledge, and their knowledge of 
religion must be gained as the knowledge of other mat- 
ters is gained. Rousseau’s “Emile” is an illustration in 
point; the child left to grow without any religion or 
religious teaching at all may finally worship the sun. 
Children are born without religion; and inasmuch 
“that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which 
is born of the Spirit is spirit,’ and also as “the natural 
man knoweth not the things of the Spirit; neither can 
he know them for they are spiritually discerned,” it 
must be plain that religion, not having been born into 
the child in fleshly birth, must be born into the child 
from without. That day will never come when each 
generation of the human race will not need its own re- 
generation, its own spiritual education, its own growing 
sanctification. Again, inasmuch as “by grace are ye 
saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is 
the gift of God,” it must be plain that faith in God is a 
gift from God. The truth of the Scripture may be de- 
cried, but if Rousseau’s “Emile” teaches us anything it 
teaches us that spiritual regeneration, spiritual discern- 
ment, and faith in God, are all three superhuman, super- 
natural; the great nature philosopher of France, whose 
religious inclinations were certainly not of the Scriptural 
type, has proved the truth of the Scripture to us. Original 


THE REGUGEAKY CAULECHETICAL CLASS 47 


sin is decried as the most moss-backed of all Christian 
doctrines; but certainly he who studies the science of 
sociology, delves into anthropology, and observes society 
in general with a keen and penetrating eye, might be able 
to discern also that the principle of inherited sin run- 
ning down through the generations would scarcely re- 
quire a Scriptural statement to bring it before the minds 
of men. 

Nor does the matter of instruction in the things per- 
taining to salvation stop here. The Christian religion 
is not an empty thing nor is it vague and hazy. It is 
full of mysteries for the reason that it transcends the 
powers of the limited finite mind; yet it contains much 
solid truth than can be grasped. The Greeks always 
derided the Jews because they never tended toward 
philosophy. In point of fact the Jews never tended to- 
ward philosophy for the reason that they had something 
better; they had a revelation. For the mind of man 
always loves to co-ordinate knowledge; it also is dis- 
satisfied enough that it always desires to reach back into 
the whys and wherefores because it wants first, final 
causes. The philosophizings of the Greeks was nothing 
other than the constant search for something in which 
that first, final cause might be lodged. It remained for 
the humble yet mighty Paul to begin that campaign 
which would finally take the speculative Greeks into 
camp. Philosophy cannot be taught to the children of 
a catechetical class, and any endeavor to do so would 
but excite our risibility. But we are reasoning to the 
end that the Christian religion does have its theistic 
foundations, does have a _ well-systematized body of 
thought; it does have a truth-content which is solidly 


48 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


established and which is well worthy of any real thinker’s 
mental steel. There is a logic of consistency in the 
Christian system; there must be if it would live. It has 
lived; it has faced all its pseudo-friends and open enemies 
since the days of Neo-Platonism and its thought qualities 
have been strengthened by that contact. Those com- 
munions using the catechism for adolescents have been 
condemned for galvanizing the minds of the young and 
stultifying their mental growth. The charge is false. 
For the Christian Bible and the Christian Church are 
the bulwarks of civilization; and so great is the truth of 
God that the scientific Kepler had to say: “O God, I 
think thy thoughts after thee.” The truth of the Chris- 
tian system may be rejected, even laughed to scorn; but 
he who will delve into the sciences of humanity as Kepler 
delved into the sciences of nature, will have to reckon 
ultimately with the truth of revelation. If the history 
of thought shows anything, it shows that a man had 
better be a Christian first and a philosopher afterwards. 
The truth of the universe and the welfare of civilization 
show that it is well to sink the truth of God into the 
youthful heart. 

Nor does the matter of religious instruction to children 
remain a matter of the children alone; the mighty mass 
of truth in God re-enforces the mind of him who does 
the teaching. When there is so much real solidity, so 
much real food for heavy thought in the Christian sys- 
tem that it requires more than a weak mental jaw to do 
the masticating, it means that he who cries out against 
doctrines in religion or against teaching specific religious 
tenets to children, is a wild prophet who needs to be 
called back to his duty by the bray of Balaam’s beast 


THE REGULAR CATECHETICAL CLASS 49 


The minds of intelligent men cannot believe in things 
that contain no intelligence. For truth is definite, specific, 
not vague and hazy, watery or colorless; truth is strong, 
objective, upstanding and upbuilding. All real truth is 
of God, for even scientific laws come from His hands. 
The religious truth of God in Christianity is the highest 
truth there is because it deals with the soul-character and 
soul-welfare of God’s highest creation. Faith, whose 
handmaiden reason is, must lay hold of solid things which 
reason upholds in order that faith may not only be the 
more intelligent but the stronger and the more stable. 
Behind the simple truths and facts taught to a cate- 
chetical class there stands a mighty bulwark of principle, 
reason, and fact—real, objective, re-enforcing, im- 
pregnable. This means that any man is standing on sure 
ground when he teaches the children definite, specific 
things that pertain to the salvation of their souls through 
_the redemption of Christ Jesus; but it also means that 
he who is conscious of the strength, the far outreach, 
and the impregnability of that mighty bulwark of truth 
behind him as he teaches the simpler truths, has an un- 
wavering assurance in doing his duty as it was com- 
manded so long ago in the Mosaic code. It means that 
he can instruct more definitely in the Gospel of Christ 
Jesus because he has a sure Gospel to teach and he knows 
that he has; and that he is sure of the additional fact 
that his Gospel has deep, sure foundations in the work, 
the revelation, and the nature of God. He will instruct 
with authority and not as the scribes. 

When the truth as it is in Christ Jesus is of this mighty 
sort it would be a great surprise if the word “evangelizo” 


50 | SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


did not include the children and their instruction. The 
nature of that truth, the nature of the child, the fact of 
a human soul, all possible arguments are in favor of 
gospelizing the children with no valid arguments against 
it; and so far as methods are concerned, the science of 
pedagogy as it is applied in all secular spheres would 
endorse the fact of catechetical instruction. If scientific 
pedagogy is extolled and developed in the teaching of 
secular wisdom, it should be extolled the higher in the 
matter of teaching religion. Those who quibble must 
evidently quibble on specious ground. From all worth- 
while angles the catechization of the children must receive 
highest endorsement. 

In view of such unanimity the verdict must be: not 
less child gospelizing but more, not weaker gospelizing 
at this stage but stronger. More gospelizing and stronger 
gospelizing in the early years—this must become and ever 
remain the slogan of the church. For in spite of the 
multitudinous vicissitudes which have robbed the Jew 
of a national home, which have scattered his race until] 
he is in actual verity the wandering Jew; despite the 
fact of his own misinterpretations of his own Scripture 
to his own undoing and to the vague and nameless long- 
ings which have led to such a program as Zionism at this 
late day, when those misinterpretations denied him a 
Messiah of his own fond imaginings, the Jew is today 
the Jew because of his strict obedience to his theocratic 
concepts. There is only one possible explanation: the 
Jew taught those concepts to his children without fail. 
One hundred and thirty-five generations have passed since 
those injunctions in Deuteronomy were given, and the 


THE sREGULARY CATECHETICAL CLASS 51 


only possible way by which the Jew could have main- 
tained himself as he has in the light of his vicissitudes, 
is for him to have taught his children with punctilious 
persistence, even though what he taught them may have 
been wrong. If a rigid, unyielding Judaizing has been 
able to do that, it shows that the command of God was 
as well founded in pedagogy as it was in Jehovistic 
worship, and it shows the path of duty plainly to the 
Christian Church. The gospelizing process among the 
children of the Church must be not one whit less insistent 
in spirit, persevering in character, or weaker in degree 
of strength or faith, than has been the Judaizing pro- 
cess through these one hundred and thirty-five genera- 
tions of Hebrew people. 

For our catechizing process must produce a like un- 
wavering loyalty to the church. To be effective as was 
the Judaizing process among the Jews, it must have a 
like background in the home. The gospelizing process 
must instil the faith to whatsoever degree it can; it must 


inculcate the knowledge of the facts of the Gospel which , 


is an integral part of faith; but it must also drive home 
the necessity of perseverance in faith. This gospelizing 
through catechization must reach both heart and head; 
it must also reach the will. It must be an interesting, 
vital thing, so conducted and the children so instructed, 
that the truth will grip them and hold them to the Church, 
even though they come from homes of poor faith or 
none at all; and when catechization is made an interest- 


b 


ing, vital thing instead of being a sort of perfunctory, | 


mechanical, dry-as-dust routine, it will touch the hearts, 
impress the consciousness, make for perseverance in 


52 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


faith, and will continue to be as it has ever been, the 
means par excellence for evangelizing the world.’ 


*He who would inform himself on the methods or on the 
scientific side of catechization should consult Gerberding: “The 
Lutheran Catechist”; Horne’s: “Catechists’ Handbook”; and Reu: 
“Catechetics.” Chapters II and XIX of Dr. Gerberding’s book 
are pertinent to the present discussion. 





CHAPTER?/V 
PERSONAL WorRK 


Though there are no statistics on such questions, and 
in the nature of the case cannot be, the judgment may 
be ventured that the great bulk of the adults brought 
into the churches of America are brought into the church 
through personal work. We have read much of the 
great evangelistic campaigns, we see the revivals in some 
of the churches year after year, and we read of their 
converts; but when we consider the entire country, 
from year to year, these numbers are not nearly equal 
to the numbers taken into membership by the slower pro- 
cess of steady, consecrated labor. Even as the gentle 
rain from heaven accomplishes more good than the dash- 
ing storm, and the gentler breeze is of more constructive 
value than the cyclonic wind, so does the constant, per- 
sistent effort by slow, but sustained effort accomplish 
far more in the Kingdom of God. In the literature of 
those denominations largely given in the past to the re- 
vivalistic method, perennial, personal evangelism is em- 
phasized more and more; in many pastorates of these 
denominations this personal, perennial work is supplant- 
ing the other method. 

The charge to Timothy that he should be instant in 
season and out of season to preach the Word carried 
with it the plain meaning of the necessity of constant, 
active effort. Much of Paul’s work was of this constant 

53 


54 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


personal effort. To the synagogues he might repair 
regularly to expound the great Messianic climax of the 
Jewish scripture; but whoever knows anything of the 
customs of the Jewish synagogue will recognize that 
theological disputation about its premises afterwards be- 
came almost as large a part of its routine as theological 
expositions within its services. On this basis the in- 
dividual personal work would issue out of Paul’s public 
disputations with the Jews, for no man who charged his 
spiritual son to be instant in season and out of season, 
and who knew both Jewish and Gentile mind as Paul 
knew it, would fail to follow up his public expositions 
with personal work. The zeal of the man would guar- 
antee it; and the many experiences of the man, with the 
many names mentioned in the Book of Acts and in his 
epistles would leave no question of the fact. The per- 
sonal work of Christ and of the disciples upon single 
individuals shows that personal work was one of the 
outstanding methods of the New Testament.’ 


I. WorKING BY LIST 


But the king’s business requires systematic efficiency. 
This personal work neither should nor dare be left to 
mere random touch. The mind of the man must be bent 
upon it as a definite labor. His will must be centered 
upon it as a specific portion of his ministry which must 
be fulfilled, if he would do the work of an evangelist and 
would make full proof of his ministry. No man should 
be so loose in his methods of work, so lacking system, 
in zeal for the Kingdom, or in will power bent pointedly 





*See Gerberding: “New Testament Conversions.” 


PERSONAL WORK a5 


upon his work, that he sits down meditatively and muses 
to himself: “Now, let’s see; whom can I get into the 
Church” and then trusts to his memory. Such a definite, 
specific thing must be cared for through a definite, specific 
system, and the only definite, specific system for the 
man of today is to work by list. Muse he must but the 
results of his musings must be set down in graphite. 
He must write down the names. As he thinks of more 
names those names must be added. The list should be 
revised at least once a year. It is needless to add, the list 
should be prayed over, should be worked upon con- 
stantly according to circumstances, temperaments, and 
conditions pertaining to or surrounding the individuals. 
But very necessary to add is this: the mind and effort of 
the man must be bent upon it in vigorous, unceasing, 
persevering exercise of will. 

Nor need the addition of names to the list be left to 
mere musings. To the man long in the ministry there 
will be no question as to how names for the list are to 
be found. But to the young beginner instruction may 
be necessary, and it is possible that even veterans may 
secure valuable hints for their work. 

a. The very first method of securing names for the 
list 1s to appeal to the church council. It is a sad fact 
that only too many of our church councils view them- 
selves as trustees of property and overseers or managers 
of the congregation as a chartered, incorporated concern. 
They see the business end and the managerial aspect 
of the congregation’s affairs but only too frequently fail 
to see the purpose of the congregation’s existence. It is 
just possible that when we transact the business of the 
kingdom we forget the spiritual side of the king’s busi- 


56 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


ness because of the dominance of the material side. In 
these days the financial and the material side of church 
life has so overshadowed the spiritual that the male 
diaconate has all but disappeared. Our church councils 
are so occupied with building programs, improvements, 
paying of apportionments, worrying over alleged vexa- 
tious financial problems, that the office of the deacon 
has degenerated into that of an usher, collector, and 
trustee ; the deacon, like the pastor, has only too frequently 
become an assistant or part operator of machinery, noth- 
ing more. The official board of any congregation in any 
denomination, by whatever name it may be called or 
however it may be organized, is an official board elected 
by the congregation to care for the interests of that con- 
gregation, and the dominant interests of any congrega- 
tion are ultimately spiritual. The local government, what- 
ever sort it may be, the local program of finance, prop- 
erty, and improvements, all these are mere means to 
achieve the desired end; they are not ends in themselves. 
And that official board, however it may be divided for 
specific duties within the congregation or for its better 
management, is an anomaly as soon as it forgets the 
purpose of its creation, or the purpose of the congrega- 
tion of which the members are elected to such office. 
No matter what theories of New Testament government 
denominations may hold, the man elected to such office 
as “elder” or “trustee” is a lay deacon nevertheless; he 
holds his office in an organization chartered, not for 
profit but for spiritual work, incorporated, not for worldly 
treasure but for treasures in heaven. His is ultimately 
a spiritual office in a spiritual organization, and his work 
is to serve tables that the man at the head of the or- 


PERSONAL WORK 57 


ganization may not be hindered in dispensing the Word. 
Holding a spiritual office in a spiritual organization, his 
is ultimately a spiritual work. 

The old time deacon, who would visit and pray with 
the sick if the congregation was without a pastor or if | 
the pastor could not go, is disappearing; and the sadder 
comment on his passing is that his modern successor 
might be shocked if he were asked whether he knew of 
any possible or prospective members for the congregation, 
and were asked to go after them or to accompany the 
pastor to these homes. He might be much inclined to 
believe that that is the work or concern of the pastor 
but not of himself. It is just possible that there are 
members of official boards who would be taken by sur- 
prise if the pastor, at any regular meeting, were to 
ask if they knew of any person who might unite with 
the congregation. It is possible, on the other hand, that 
there may be pastors who, even in the course of long 
ministerial careers, have never asked that question of their 
brethren of the church council. But at least during the 
nine months in the year, when church work is active, 
never a meeting should pass without the raising of that 
question. So far as concerns business administration, | 
every young man entering the ministry, should come 
before his church council with a regular order of busi- 
ness. And just as the roll call, the minutes, the reports 
of officers and committees come in due and regular order, 
so should the item “New Members” be written on the 
order of business outline which the pastor brings to the 
meeting. For the church was established for the sal- 
vation of souls; and if the manipulation of methods and 
machinery is allowed to overgrow and throttle or to 


58 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


shelve the real purpose of the congregation in the ser- 
vice of Christ Jesus, then have the means transcended 
the end, the proper viewpoint of his spiritual office is for- 
gotten by the deacon, the proper attitude of the in- 
cumbent of the office is lost, and the church deteriorates 
in spiritual power. 

b. The second source of names for the list is the 
parents of baptized children. The Lutheran Church has 
always baptized little children and has stood on good 
Scriptural ground in so doing. No child is baptized 
without responsible sponsorship assuring the proper 
rearing and training of the child in Christian faith. The 
best guarantee that the children will receive such rear- 
ing and training is for the parents to be in the Church. 
This whole question is large, too large for present space 
or for present purpose, and it would not be germane to 
this discussion to debate it here. Nor is it necessary. 
The fact of infant baptism as a Scriptural obligation is 
established. The point germane to this discussion is that 
all parties to the proceeding shall do their duty. The 
child shall be in the Church, the parents shall be in the 
Church, and the evangelist shall see to it that they are in 
the Church. 

The Scripture demands that no man be slovenly in 
business. This certainly should apply in the business of 
the Lord. Every congregation should maintain com- 
plete, correct and systematic records of all things per- 
taining to the growth and the workings of the congrega- 
tion. A congregation without a large, adequate parish 
record is an anomaly, and any pastor who does not 
keep complete records needs to take lessons from the 
children of the world. All baptisms are recorded in 


PERSONAL WORK 59 


the parish record; and if there is no opportunity to 
deal with the spiritual end of the matter upon the oc- 
casion of the baptism, the names should be added to the 
prospective membership list or taken from the parish 
record that opportunity to speak of the spiritual respon- 
sibility be insured later on. 

c. The parents of the confirmants must be given 
personal attention. The children baptized shall be reared 
in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They are 
baptized members of the Church but they are not com- 
municant members; before they are entitled to this 
means of grace they must be instructed in the faith, as 
has been stated in a previous chapter. They are re- 

ceived into the communicant eer te by the rite of 
confirmation. 

But one of the greatest weaknesses in the Lutheran 
Church in this country is the state church idea of con- 
firmation. We confirm or receive large numbers every 
year whose parents are not members of the Church, and 
in this there is a sad inconsistency. The Holy Spirit 
confirms the work begun, the pastor confirms the fact 
that the necessary Biblical instruction has been given 
entitling the confirmant to reception as a communicant 
member with admittance to the Lord’s Supper, and the 
assembled congregation also confirms by assent that the 
confirmant be admitted to communicant membership on 
the ground of this instruction; but the confirmant him- 
self holds the largest share of the confirming when he 
confirms with his own lips what someone else once an- 
swered for him. The greatest burden of the confirma- 
tion igs upon the confirmant himself! Parents have not 
done their duty when they have sent their children to 


60 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


the pastor for a year or more to be “confirmed”’ and the 
sooner they know it the better for them, for their children, 
and for the Church. The Lutheran Church of this coun- 
try needs annual sermons of unqualified force when the 
class is to be organized and again on the occasion of the 
confirmation. But every one of these inconsistent homes 
needs personal work before the time of confirmation 
arrives. 

d. The parents of the Sunday school pupils also fur- 
nish material for the list in personal work. Here is an 
excellent recruiting ground for the Church. But it can 
be done only where an excellent card system of regis- 
tration is kept by the Sunday school. No Sunday school, 
especially in the cities, should be without its card index 
system, containing the address of the family and other 
details. A correct registration card, filled out at the time 
when the child is enrolled, will ask the question as to 
whether or not the child is baptized. Such questions are 
not always answered by the parents when the registra- 
tion card is sent back to the school with the child; but 
where the street address is given the desired information 
can be obtained. To call upon the parents of all the 
children in the Sunday school is not an easy task. In 
large congregations the duties of the pastor are so arduous 
that many things are not done as they should be done 
for the simple reason that no man is sufficient unto all 
the things demanded in his work. But if it can be done 
in no other way it should be done by the teacher at least, 
and as a last resort, the calls should be made and the 
personal work done in the homes of the older children as 
they are canvassed for the catechetical class. At all events 
the parents of the Sunday school children do furnish a 


PERSONAL WORK 61 


fine field for personal evangelism and this field should 
not be neglected. 

e. In many congregations parish papers are published 
and handed out to the attendants at the services of. the 
day. In these local parish papers space may be left for 
the signatures of the attendants in blocks pertaining to 
desired membership, desired calls, or sickness in the home. 
In many cases few such signatures are secured; but if 
the parish paper is published anyway, such spaces may 
be left and designated for however much or little they 
may produce. 

f. The parish records of our congregations have 
many tales to tell. One of the worst tales they have to 
tell is of the number of mixed marriages wherein the 
marriage of Lutherans to those of other persuasions has 
carried the Lutheran member of the matrimonial alliance 
out of the household of faith. 

Marriage is not always contracted “in the Lord.” 
The old Scriptural excuse is still working: “I have mar- 
ried a wife and therefore I cannot come.” However this 
may be, the marriage records in the parish book furnish 
material for an evangelizing list in personal work and 
these names should be cultivated. If the young couple 
have not started correctly by praying over the choice of 
life companions, the fault should be corrected as early 
as possible, and the couple urged to start life aright by 
both unitedly attending the marriage-feast of the Son 
of God and His bride, the Church. 

g. Never will we forget the advice once heard in 
a theological classroom that the students should never 
belittle their dignity by going to the door after service 


62 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


to shake hands with the people. It was “Methodistic.” 
If this is Methodistic, then all glory to the Methodists! 
The man of the ministry may be exclusive if he will, 
but he will discover that his Lord was a democratic mover 
among the multitudes. He may carry a heavy load of 
official dignity if he will, but he will discover that in a 
democratic country the man must carry the office, not 
the office the man. Simon Stylites was not an evangelical, 
nor did he live in the United States of America! 

Without a doubt the pastor should go to the door after, 
the service to greet the people. It will give him power 
and influence among his own people. But the great 
point which must be the dominating idea sending him to 
the door purposely, definitely, specifically with well- 
defined purpose, is that he shall go there to greet the 
stranger with ultimate personal evangelism in view. No 
man need go to the door merely on the basis of sickly 
sentiment. In every congregation there are faint-hearted 
people who are yet feeding upon the milk instead of the 
meat of the Word, and who have been feeding thus for 
years. But the local pastor must make it plain by specific 
explanation that he does not go to the door for the sole 
purpose of merely shaking hands with his own people; 
he must explain clearly that he goes to the door primarily 
to welcome the stranger. His purpose in welcoming the - 
stranger is to win the stranger through the warm, draw- 
ing power. of his own service. The dominating purpose 
in his going to the door must be that of personal evan- 
gelism; and if he goes to the door with this purpose in 
his mind he will secure names and will, consequently, 
gather people. : 

In actual fact the matter does not stop here. Every 


PERSONAL WORK 63 


man must educate his people along the same lines. Other 
things being equal, those who go to church voluntarily 
can be won and held more easily than those who must 
be talked into going to church or who must be dragged 
or driven to the temple. But even so, large numbers 
of the general populace do not frequent the churches 
with any regularity; if the church is “cold” there is little 
inducement in the humanism of the congregation to make 
them return because there is no humanism there. A 
solid Gospel should be preached from the pulpit but 
there should be also the wholesome human atmosphere 
emanating from the assembled worshipers and com- 
municating itself to the visitor; this wholesome, social 
humanism, is what is usually meant by the “warmth” of 
the church, and it must be present if the stranger would 
be attracted and held. There is no need to quibble over 
this; it is a stubborn, American fact, and if there were 
any room to quibble over it, certainly the only persons 
entitled to quibble over the fact would be those who do 
furnish a wholesome, warm humanism and communicate 
the atmosphere of it to the stranger within the gates. The 
pastor and people who make no effort to make the 
stranger feel at home or welcome have sealed their own 
lips on the entire question. The Christian house of God 
is not a Jewish temple defiled by Gentile presence; it is 
God’s Zion to which all people shall be encouraged to 
trace their steps. But once there, such unchurched peo- 
ple shall not be made to feel they are Gentiles, merely 
tolerated, stared at or viewed as intruders, given no 
welcome, shown no sign of encouragement to return. The 
stranger within the gates shall be made to feel that the 
human side of the communion of saints, the fellowship 


64 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


of believers is not chilly, exclusive, or forbidding, and 
the attitude of both pastor and people shall be such that 
this feeling strikes all who come. 

The people of the congregation, then, must be in- 
structed first of all in one of the main points in going 
to the door The purpose of the pastor must permeate 
them that they too, shall follow his example and see his 
viewpoint. If the explanation of his purpose is clear, he 
can tell his own people plainly that he will turn from 
them at any time and allow them to go unnoticed and 
ungreeted if he can lay hands on the stranger, and his 
dereliction at any time will not offend the insipid or the 
weak. He will be giving an excellent demonstration of 
the duty of everyone in the church. One of the greatest 
weaknesses in our congregations is that people who should 
know and do better allow the stranger to walk out un- 
noticed and unwelcomed while they themselves clique 
into little groups to discuss inconsequential affairs which 
might be left for telephone gossip on Monday after- 
noons. Those who live within a stone’s throw of each 
other greet each other while the stranger goes ungreeted. 
The ever present comment of the small, petty nature: 
“Mrs. Doe was in church and never talked with me 
or even shook hands with me,” is forcible because it is 
heard; the possibly unspoken thought of the stranger 
who left ungreeted is unimagined because it is unheard, 
and our churches suffer because of it! 

It is high time that the bulk of our people rose to 
higher levels. The milk of the Word is most wholesome 
but it becomes adulterated when it is mixed with a weak 
sentimentality. The smoking flax shall not be quenched 
nor the bruised reed be broken, because the light or little 


PERSONAL WORK 65 


faith must be strengthened; but there is no need to con- 
tinue the coddling process beyond the infant stage. Faith 
should be or become rugged; the robes of faith cannot 
forever be used as swaddling clothes for infantile sen- 
timentalism, and our people should have it made plain to 
them. The people of the congregation, instead of waiting 
to be greeted by the pastor or becoming peevish if théy 
are not greeted, should themselves greet the stranger 
actively and purposely that he may be made to feel at 
home, welcome in the temple, desired in the service and 
in the congregation. Our people must be educated to 
this stage, and instructed to gather names or whatever 
information may be had, for the definite purpose of 
making the Kingdom grow to the salvation of souls. 
There are men in the ministry who have had committees 
of their members, not only to greet the stranger, but to 
take down names and addresses for personal work in 
evangelism. In some congregations it has become a 
definite, systematized program. ‘The presence of the pas- 
tor at the door, as a move to gain leverage for personal 
work, with the corollary activity of his people in the 
same direction for the same purpose, is so plain and 
likewise so productive of results to the Kingdom, that 
one wonders how it is possible that the sheer dignity 
of the pastor shall crowd down this highly important 
factor in the growth of the Kingdom! 

h. The Every Member Canvass is now practically 
universal in congregations of any proportion or pro- 
gressiveness. But the annual visitation can be made to 
accomplish far more than the financial support of the 
congregation. No card should ever be used by the can- 
vassing teams of laymen which does not contain the 


66 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


question to be asked at each home as to the names of 
prospective members for the congregation. People may 
be sensitive on questions pertaining to their financial 
support but they will never resent questions as to pro- 
spective or possible members. Their very selfishness, if 
no other motive were present, would incline them to sug- 
gest the names of others to come into the congregation 
to help bear the financial burden! 

1. Names for the list may be secured during pastoral 
visitation. It is well to keep the members of the con- 
gregation alert to the necessity of a personal outlook. 
Names may be gathered at the meetings of the or- 
ganizations of the church. The brotherhood of a certain 
congregation has a standing question in the order of 
business of the brotherhood: “Does any brother know 
of anyone who has recently moved into the city, or who 
might be interested in the church?” Such a question 
might well be made a part of the standing order of busi- 
ness of every brotherhood in the land. 

7. One very important method of gaining names for 
a personal work list is the canvass of entire towns or 
cities. This has been done in many places by the con- 
gregations of the various denominations in the locality, 
headed usually by the ministerial associations. The 
weakness in this method is that it does not gather ac- 
curate returns; for people who are not members, who 
merely “lean” in the direction of one denomination or 
one congregation will answer the canvassers to the effect 
that they are members. The only way by which this 
method can cover this defect is for the canvassing teams 
to list every call by name and alleged church connec- 
tion. When the cards are turned in, the pastors of the 


PERSONAL WORK 67 


churches can determine those who have implied their 
leaning to mean actual connection. The unchurched will 
resent being singled out for concentrated fire in the 
publicity attaching to any such campaign, and their an- 
swers, if answers are given, will often be specious and 
misleading. But names will be produced; and if every 
call is listed no matter whether the people approached 
are Christian leaders or the most debauched of infidels, 
definite results can be secured. 

In the American Lutheran for October, 1924, the in- 
formation is given that the members of the congregations 
of the Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other 
states, propose to canvass the entire city of Chicago. 
Such a project is a tremendous undertaking; but such 
projects undoubtedly will produce large numbers of 
names for a personal work list. The same issue of the 
same paper states that this Lutheran body proposes to 
canvass the entire State of Minnesota. To canvass the 
State of Minnesota might not be more baffling than to 
canvass the city of Chicago. The purpose is laudable; 
one may only hope that it is carried into successful ex- 
ecution. Whole cities and entire counties have been 
covered in this way; it yet remains to be seen whether 
entire states may be canvassed. And in the face of such 
monumental endeavors we wonder what the results of 
such work may be. It deserves the attention of minis- 
terial associations and mission authorities everywhere. | 

These are but a few of the various ways in which the 
list will grow. When people are started in the way of 
watching for prospective members, they will come to the 
pastor voluntarily with names for the list. The list is 
for the use of the pastor; but not the least of the virtues 


68 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


of the list is that it imbues the members of the con- 
gregation with the missionary spirit to gather souls. 


II. REASONING AS PAUL REASONED 


In Acts 24:25 we read that the great evangelizing 
apostle, who labored in season and out of season, rea- 
soned before the ruling Felix of righteousness and tem- 
perance and judgment to come, and made Felix tremble 
with his reasonings. Much of the personal work in 
evangelizing is of precisely this sort. Fifty-six per cent 
of the population of the United States is unchurched, and 
this fifty-six per cent comes to church only as special 
occasion may demand. If the mountain will not come 
to Mohammed, Mohammed cannot hesitate to go to the 
mountain. The spiritual sons of Paul and Timothy 
must labor in season and out of season as did their worthy 
predecessors; the Gospel must be taken into the house. 
And inasmuch as the men of the families are at their 
work during the day, much of this personal work must 
be done by visitation in the evening. 

This is not easy. In the first place it is slow, and 
whatever is slow requires patience and perseverance. 
Many men in the ministry are overborne by the numbers 
converted in the great evangelistic campaigns and have 
tended to look askance on this slow process of personal 
evangelism and its slow results. Large things sometimes 
carry a man away; what is worse, they tend to distort 
his vision and to make him shirk his duty. The large 
numbers brought in through the evangelistic campaigns 
have often weakened the stationed servant of the Spirit 
because in the light of these numbers he cannot see the 
idea of sitting down after supper with an individual man 


PERSONAL WORK 69 


and reasoning with that one lone soul on the claims of 
the kingdom or on setting himself right with God. 
Despite the fact there is no price on a soul, the man 
who is carried away with the sight or the idea of big 
things, will forget the duty so plainly given by Paul, and 
re-enforced so solidly by the previous examples of the 
Christ in personal work. Instead of going to that one 
lone soul and reasoning on righteousness, temperance, and 
judgment to come as Paul did and as Christ had done 
previously, he will wait until he can get the evangelist 
into the community and then invite that soul to the 
church to hear the evangelist in the hope of mass or 
emotional conversion. Modern mass evangelism has 
weakened the stationed servant of God and only too often 
has tended to make him shirk his duty. But as our Lord 
evangelized the enquiring Nicodemus, the sinner at 
Jacob’s well, the publican in his own house, and many 
others as narrated in the gospels; as Paul reasoned be- 
fore Felix, Agrippa and Festus, converted the jailor and 
doubtless uncounted others; so must the local pastor 
maintain his stewardship of the evangelizing Word and 
prosecute his work. 

Emphatically this reasoning as Paul reasoned before 
Felix is not easy; it is difficult and laborious. The very 
slowness of it is discouraging to some men; but this ap- 
parent slowness, coupled with the labor required and: the 
difficulties encountered, make it doubly hard. The ef- 
fort itself, plodding about evening after evening often 
in bad weather when a man had rather be at home, re- 
quires a very definite exercise of will. Not only does 
it require a very definite exercise of will for a man to 
betake himself out through the streets evening after 


70 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


evening when he would prefer to read and rest; it re- 
quires a seasoned personality, a fearless heart, and a 
love for souls and for the kingdom. It requires grit 
to start out and perseverance to keep going. It requires 
far greater courage to sit down on the opposite side of 
a table and talk to a man about his soul than it does to 
thunder away from pulpit or platform at several hun- 
dred or more. With the courage there is required a 
well-controlled personal poise to reason with one lone 
soul on righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. 
Behind the finely self-controlled personal poise as a 
foundational cause for it, there must stand an over- 
towering and over-powering faith, the kind of faith 
which carries with it an unwavering certainty, the kind of - 
faith which stands like solid Gibraltar and the more 
solid God from whose hands solid Gibraltar came. For 
it is easily conceivable that a man with a spineless faith 
or even a hypocrite could preach from the pulpit or 
could thunder with Bashan-like vociferations from the 
public platform; but no hypocrite will go about sys- 
tematically night after night for years to sit down with 
unchurched men, ask them about their souls or plead with 
them to be reconciled to God. As a crowning climax 
to the will-power, the grit, the perseverance, the seasoned 
personal poise, the courage, the confident faith, there is 
required easily as much zeal for the Kingdom and love 
for souls, to go about such work slowly, without sen- 
sation, without any spectacular display, without the blare 
of trumpets and newspaper publicity, as it does to be 
at the head of a huge, well-organized evangelistic com- 
pany. 

Small wonder, then, that Paul gives Timothy the in- 


PERSONAL WORK 71 


junctions and likewise the warnings with them, for this 
going about reasoning with twentieth century Felixes 
puts the minister to the acid test. If he is a real evan- 
gelist he will do it; if he is not willing to spend and be 
spent, he will lack the ultimate faith and the will power 
to go. Moses could ask God to kill him that the people 
be forgiven; Paul’s heart-prayer was for Israel and he 
could wish himself condemned if by that means Israel 
could be saved. The ill-treatment he received at the 
hands of his own race, instead of discouraging him, made 
him more zealous than ever, and though he turned to 
the Gentiles, died at Gentile hands on Gentile soil, the 
real cause for his death came from Jerusalem. Our Lord 
said: “We go to Jerusalem,” although He knew and 
the disciples knew that furtive death lurked in Zion’s 
capital city; yet, despite that certain knowledge and de- 
spite the protests of the twelve, to Jerusalem He went, 
and the Twelve went with Him. In Gethsemane He prayed 
that the Father’s will be done though He had to drink 
the cup to the bitter dregs and had to tread the wine- 
press alone; to the sleepy watchers He said, “Rise, let 
us be going,” and to His shameful death He went with- 
out another murmur. 

Such work is difficult, it is trying, it requires the best 
that any man has in him and requires that a man shall 
give his best. But God’s work never has been easy. If 
Moses and Paul and others could give of their best the 
modern Timothy must do the same. Over and above 
all this, the man of God must make himself an ever 
worthier vessel unto God’s honor. There is no magic 
“Presto, change” to metamorphose the earthen or wooden 
vessel into a gold or silver chalice. If a man does not 


72 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


have all of the above requisite qualifications he must 
grow into them or make them grow in himself. Like 
the statement of our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, 
that if a man sought first the Kingdom of God and its 
righteousness, all these other things would be added unto 
him, so will the other qualifications be added if the evan- 
gelist has the fundamentals. The solid faith he must 
have or he is not fit to be in the ministry and has no 
place there; the calm, certain confidence of and in that 
faith he must have, else he cannot preach with authority 
and will be but a parroting scribe. The zeal for the 
Kingdom and for souls he must have, else the real mean- 
ing of “evangelizo” has not gripped his heart and he is 
not a genuine evangelist. Having the unwavering, con- 
fident faith and the zeal, the other requisite qualifications 
can be added or acquired; the will-power, the grit, the 
courage, the perseverance, and the well-controlled poise, 
will come through the grace of God to him who desires 
these gifts righteously and cultivates them untiringly. 
For the man of God has the gracious assurance that 
God is with him. Not only is he commanded to go forth 
panoplied with the full armor of God; his assurance is 
that he can be strong in the Lord and in the power of 
God’s might. The true evangelist is not naked to the 
devil’s shafts, his breast is not bare; his loins are girt 
about with truth, he wears the breastplate of righteous- 
ness, his feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel 
of peace, he is protected with the shield of faith, his head 
carries the helmet of salvation and he is armed as never 
man was armed since the day of Gideon—he wields the 
sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. Equipped 
with his armor and this weapon he need not fear; he 


PERSONAL WORK 73 


can lean, as the men of God have always leaned, on the 
outstretched arm and the mighty hand of God. He is 
not alone; God is with him, and God and one always make 
a majority. Before the Christ enjoined his followers to 
disciple the nations to the uttermost parts of the earth, 
He prefaced his injunction with the remarkable founda- 
tion: “All power is given to me both in heaven and on 
earthy » )/Then’ He “said; “Go ye therefore,” and’ the 
“therefore” hinges the command and the entire project 
upon power given to Him and by Him to them. A man 
by himself cannot make a Christian out of anyone; God 
can, through the man. When a man makes a Christian 
he does it, not with his own power nor with the power 
resident in the subject to be worked upon; he does it | 
by the power of God. The power belongs not to man | 
but to God, and whatever work of man there be con- 
tributing to the process is done with God’s divine tools. 
The evangelist himself is but an instrument, a tool in 
God’s hands using God’s tools to do God’s work. But, 
inasmuch as the human being as an instrument of God 
is a conscious instrument, a living messenger who can 
carry his message wretchedly if he is content to remain 
on so gross a plane, or carry it with ever increasing 
efficiency by growth in grace and growth in knowledge, 
so it remains for the man to strive toward and in that 
erowth. As this conscious instrument is self-conscious 
and self-determining in personality, capable of intro- 
spection and consequent improvement, it behooves the 
man to use the tools of God with the greatest efficiency 
possible for him; it also behooves him to use himself and 
to improve himself with as much intelligence as he can 
muster. Truly, as the material things of the earth are 


74 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


added unto the individual seeking first the Kingdom and 
its righteousness, so will the other qualifications of the 
conscientious evangelist be added to him who desires them 
that he may use them to the glory of God. 

Nor is such work as slow as it is usually represented 
to be. The large numbers heralded abroad as the work 
of the traveling evangelists become outstanding figures 
because they become matters of publicity, are heralded 
so far and wide, and are impressed upon the public 
mind. These are usually represented as the work of one 
man whereas in truth such is not the case. For many 
churches are closed, the concentrated effort of the people 
of many churches is centered in and upon the work of the 
one evangelist, and frequently during the months previous 
to the advent of the itinerant evangelist there is little 
personal work done in and through the congregations 
supporting the movement. At times the older children or 
younger people usually pointed for a congregational 
decision day are pointed for the tabernacle conversion 
instead, and the numbers of converts are swelled with a 
sort of padding or credit really to be credited to the 
uniting congregations. Were the actual number not sup- 
plied by the churches, untouchable by the churches, not in 
any way to be credited to the activity of the churches 
joining in the movement, owing nothing to the efforts 
of the churches in any possible way, to be the actual num- 
ber by which the success of the campaign might be judged, 
it is easily conceivable that the allegedly slow process of 
personal work produces more in the end than the great 
campaigns. 

But no matter what united efforts may be made or 
what they have produced, no man is exempted from his 


PERSONAL WORK 75 


God-given duty, though it be but the small, unspectacular 
effort upon a lone individual soul. Even the most ardent 
revivalist is not excused from personal work. The in- 
junction of Paul to Timothy to be instant in season and 
out of season, to do the work of an evangelist and to 
make full proof of his ministry, is the injunction of one 
who did much of his own evangelizing by personal work, 
and the constant, persevering fidelity it enjoins can be 
indicative of nothing less on the part of Timothy’s suc- 
cessors. Our Lord did most of His work by the same 
apparently slow process of personal conversation; and 
His words were no sweeter or no weightier when de- 
livered to enraptured crowds than when they were spoken 
to the timid inquirer at lonely midnight or to the social 
outcast at the noon-day well. Paul could reason with 
Agrippa, Festus or Felix with as much zest as he could 
expound the Messiah in the synagogues or start with 
the unknown God before sophistic Athenians on Mars 
Hill; and such great evangelists as Moody and Talmadge 
could speak with a fervor and pray with an eloquence 
with a single individual that rivalled the finest of their 
public, platform work. As it was with them, so it is 
with us, and ever will be with those who come after— 
it is not a question of numbers at all; it is a question of 
faith, of zeal, and of willingness. 

On the method of approach within the home little need 
be said. There are so many factors entering into this 
that no stereotyped rules may be laid down. The per- 
sonal equations of both evangelist and subject count for 
much; the conditions, the circumstances leading to the 
interview have much to do; the environment, the per- 
sonal heredity and the ecclesiastical antecedents of the 


76 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


subject lend much color; even such elements as financial 
status and matrimonial union exercise their influence. 
The reasons advanced for church membership may be 
many and various; some of them we will enumerate: 
First, a man owes a duty to his God; second, he owes 
a duty to himself; third, he owes a duty to his family, 
especially, let us say, to his children; fourth, to do his 
worshiping in public for attestation to the world; fifth, 
to make his life count for God and the things of God; 
sixth, to throw his moral and spiritual influence in favor 
of the Church and with church people; seventh, to imbue 
his civic righteousness with religious motives; eighth, to 
establish his social contacts as much as possible in a clean, 
spiritual atmosphere. Some of these may sound strange 
to conservative ears, but it should be remembered that 
many a man considers himself tolerably good as he is, 
as good as the majority, for salvation by righteousness, 
even civic righteousness, is the general public creed, and 
to tell a man at the outset that his own self-grown right- 
eousness is akin to filthy rags in the sight of God is to 
insult him and drive him away. 

Some men approached by this direct personal work 
in their own homes may argue, many will produce all 
sorts of excuses and alibis for their failure to come into 
the Church. But the man of God must ever remember 
that what a man wants to do he will do, which is only 
another way of saying that where there is a will there 
is a way. No man can ever reason another or argue an- 
other into the Kingdom simply because no man can by 
sheer reason find out God or the redeeming Son. Let 
no evangelist become unbalanced here. Jesus Christ 
cannot be approached as an intellectual or historical prob- 


PERSONAL WORK 77 


lem with any hope of solving the great enigma to the 
content of the believing mind, much less the doubtful 
or the unbelieving mind. Theologians who already be- 
lieve may discourse learnedly within the realms of logic 
and metaphysics about essence, substance, “commiuni- 
catio idiomatum,” natures and personality, and in those 
or to those who already believe it may produce a vast 
contentment because they know they have a Saviour who 
could save because His deity gave Him burden-bearing 
power, and His humanity enabled Him to place Himself 
under the curse of the law, and under the justice of that 
law and its perfect law-giver. But in final reality the 
Son of God cannot be subjected to any arbitrary vivi- 
section; in final analysis the most acute theologian must 
be saved, not by his sharp intellectual grasp of the Christ 
personality, but by his firm faith and his childlike trust 
in the Christ saving-power. The evangelist must know 
that the Christ cannot be argued with unbelievers; cer- 
tainly with them He is not a subject for clever and 
deliberate discussions. Under such circumstances He 
cannot and does not yield Himself to mental scrutiny 
and human criticism; under these circumstances He is to 
be spoken about only from the angle of sin and the neces- 
sity of the soul to find out who He is and what He can 
do. By the unchurched at least, the Christ must rather 
be grasped by the spirit than be understood by the mind, 
and this fact must be recognized by the evangelist. The 
answer of the Christ from His own lips still stands: “If 
any man will do His will, he shall known of the doctrine, 
whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” 
Only once in thirteen years have we been called upon to 


78 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


explain how Christ could bear the heavy burden which 
the Lutheran doctrine of the Atonement puts upon His 
shoulders, and this lone question came from a Unitarian 
whom we won. ‘The evangelist must be well-trained, for 
just such might be lost to the Church if he were not 
able to explain. But this fact must stand out clearly: 
no man will ever see the cross through argument; he will 
see it only when he feels the bitterness and the burden 
of sin, when he feels the need of a Saviour.’ 

The eight points enumerated as arguments for uniting 
with the Church are not categorical; they merely tend to 
show the angles from which various individuals may be 
approached by various personal evangelists. In final 
analysis the approach of the evangelist in personal work 
would amount to this: the question of evangelism is a 
faith question, a soul question, and the evangelist dare 
not be thrown off the track by the evasions, the excuses, 
the alibis or the arguments of the unchurched. Through 
all these he must hang on to the main point at issue: 
“What about your soul’ and “Be ye reconciled to God.” 
The plain fact is that no man ought to live here and now 
without God, and no man can live with God hereafter 
if he lives without God here and now. The Creator 
gave men minds to use and intended that men should use 
them, evangelists as well as others; Paul states that he 
caught some with guile, by which he does not mean 
chicanery, and he states also that he became all things 
to all men that by all means he might save some. But 





? Joseph Parker in his “People’s Bible” has a fine discourse on 
this, based on Matt. 15:21-31 under the title “Christ surprised 
by Faith.” 


PERSONAL WORK 79 


superficialities and mere surface plausibilities can never 
be emphasized. They lead people astray into the mere 
by-paths and side-issues of church relationship; salva- 
tion, the soul, and the relation of the soul to God, are 
too momentous for that, and the Church’s ambassadors 
cannot lower either themselves or their church by coming 
down to this plane. 

The attitude or bearing of the evangelist counts for 
much. Such colloquies must never descend to the loud 
argument; the pastor must cultivate the quiet-toned, level- 
eyed poise which only confidence, fine self-control, and 
certainty in faith can achieve. These attitudes will react 
upon the man interviewed and will carry as much weight 
as the content of the presentation. 

Such reasoning as Paul reasoned in personal work will 
produce results. The man brought to profession of faith 
through the slow, yet deadly reasoning will be more likely 
to remain a solid, steadfast disciple, because the personal 
touch and individual element pierce him through and 
through. He is not a mere unit among hundreds; he is 
alone, and the reasoning is directed to him and against 
him alone. The influence playing upon him is not the 
contagious reaction of mob psychology but the deadly 
seriousness of an earnest soul fearless and certain in its 
own faith and in its desire that that same faith shall be 
his; the appeal is not made to his stimulated emotions or 
his feelings but to his reason and his soldier self as well. 
He becomes refined in the fire of an inner conviction 
which permeates him to his inner consciousness; he is 
not stampeded but is appealed to coolly and can decide 
coolly with all his faculties functioning normally in bal- 


80 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


anced co-ordination. The Word has cut into his heart, 
into his inner consciousness. He who has tried it knows 
that the words of Paul, “Living without God in the 
world” and “Be ye reconciled to God,” are still of vital 
force. 


CHAPTER VI 
Tue Pusriic APPEAL 


A study of the sermons in the New Testament reveals 
that after discoursing on the ground and facts of Old 
Testament history and prophecy, and of New Testament 
facts as related in the gospels, those preaching the ser- 
mons either appealed directly or implied indirectly that 
their hearers should believe in Jesus Christ to the sal- 
vation of their souls. 

The first sermon given in the Book of Acts, after 
the Ascension of Christ and the sending of the Holy 
Spirit on the day of Pentecost, is that of Peter, im- 
mediately after the Holy Ghost was given. Peter began 
with the prophecy of Joel on the point of the prophesied 
Pentecost and connected it with the outpouring of that 
same day. His sermon pricked many of his hearers to 
the heart, and in answer to their question as to what they 
should do, he appealed to them: “Repent, and be bap- 
tized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for 
the remission of sins.” 

The second sermon is that of Peter upon the oc- 
casion of the healing of the crippled beggar at the temple 
gate and the amazement it produced among the populace. 
Peter began with the patriarchal relation to God, cited the 
prophet like unto Moses whom God should raise up, 
referred to the prophets from Samuel onward, and con- 
cluded with the fulfillment of the covenant with 

81 


82 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


Abraham in the person of Christ Jesus to bless them in 
turning them away from their iniquities. Here is an 
indirect implication toward faith in Christ Jesus as the 
Saviour from sin. 

The third sermon is that of Stephen before the Jewish 
council, which was terminated abruptly when it became 
apparent that he was centering the entire Old Testament 
dispensation in the just One whom they had killed. The 
gnashing rage of the Jews and their mob action show the 
implication plainly. 

The fourth sermon is that of Peter in the household 
of Cornelius, the centurion, in Czsarea, before the “many 
that were come together.” Cornelius was a devout, pray- 
ing man, who evidently was not far from the Kingdom 
though his religion was not pure. On this occasion 
Peter began with the relation of God to the Gentile 
world, expounded Jesus of Nazareth as the anointed 
One of God, raised of God, ordained of God to be the 
judge of the quick and the dead, and as the One to 
whom all the prophets gave witness “that through His 
name, whosover believeth in Him shall receive remission 
of sins.” The sequel was that both Jews and Gentiles 
were baptized. | 

The fifth sermon is that of Paul in the synagogue at 
Antioch. He began with the bondage in Egypt, cited the 
inauguration of the kingdom under Saul, then the rule of 
David, and the renewal of the patriarchal covenant with 
David fulfilled through Davidic genealogy as stated in 
Paul’s words: “Of this man’s seed hath God, according 
to his promise, raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus.” 
Paul cites the testimony of John the Baptist; he main- 
tains that the Jews at Jerusalem, not understanding the 


VAR TRUBLICFAPPRAT byte 


prophets read every Sabbath day nor recognizing the 
Messiah, fulfilled the Scriptures in condemning Him. 
He continues to expound the resurrection as prophesied 
in the psalms, and states plainly: “Be it known unto 
you, brethren, that through this man is preached unto 
you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him all that believe 
are justified from all things, from which ye could not 
be justified by the law of Moses.’ Then he makes a very 
direct appeal: “Beware, therefore, lest thiat come upon 
you which is spoken of in the prophets: Behold, ye 
despisers, and wonder and perish; for I work a work in 
your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, 
though a man declare it unto you.” 

The sixth sermon is that of Paul to the Athenians in 
Acts 17:22-31. Paul began with the altar to the un- 
known God, proceeded to expound God as the Creator, 
a spiritual God desiring the worship of His created 
offspring, and demanded repentance of all men every- 
where on the basis of a coming judgment upon all men 
by Him whom God had raised from the dead. 

The last discourse is Paul’s defence before the as- 
sembled rulers, Festus and Agrippa. Paul cites the 
promise of God to the Twelve Tribes, discourses at some 
length upon his Pharisaic training, his former perse- 
cution of the Christians, his trip to Damascus and his 
conversion on the road, and his preaching with his final 
capture in the temple of Jerusalem. Festus declared him 
mad from much learning. Agrippa made the peculiar 
answer: “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian ;” 
and Paul flames forth with the impassioned desire that 
all who heard him were both almost and altogether such 
as he with the exception of his prisoner’s bonds.. 


84 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


These New Testament precedents warrant the public 
appeal in the church service that those present who are 
not members of any church shall unite with the congre- 
gation. This may sound strange to conservative ears. 
Many a staid, conservative congregation would be dumb- 
founded if its pastor, some Sunday morning, would issue 
a public appeal that if there were any present who were 
not members of any church or held no membership in 
that city, should unite with the congregation, see him 
after the service, hand their names to one of the ushers, 
or call him during the ensuing week. To the minds of 
many this would be a sort of emotional proceeding, ir- 
regular, out of tune with conservative polity and 
practise. 

But it need be neither emotional nor irregular; in fact 
it should be neither. It is evident from a study of the 
conditions under which the new Testament discourses 
were delivered, that the preachers were addressing people 
already conversant to more or less degree with the 
foundations of religion. The only exception is that of 
Paul upon Mars’ Hill, and even there Paul begins with 
the religion that he found and with the altar to the un- 
known God whom they worshiped without knowing what 
or who he was. The second point that stands out is that 
in every case the pedagogical connection between the 
known and the unknown was explained before any ap- 
peal for repentance, baptism, or faith in the redeeming 
Messiah was made. The facts leading to the Messiah- 
ship, the basis of the redemption from one angle or 
another as the circumstances happened to demand, were 
recited as a foundation for the appeal. The minds of 
the hearers were enlightened before faith or baptism was 


THE PUBLIC APPEAL 85 


urged upon them; the appeals for further steps in faith 
were based upon the knowledge, and were directed, not to 
the emotions, but to the total consciousness acting upon 
the knowledge given. In the New Testament there was 
nothing irregular about it nor was there anything 
emotional. If there was nothing emotional or irregular 
about it in the Scripture there need be nothing emotional 
or irregular about it in the Church today. Its presence 
in the Scripture as a practised method makes it Scrip- 
tural, and the real care of the twentieth century evangelist 
shall be to make it Scriptural, which means that he shall 
keep such public appeal or public invitation within the 
sanctioned Scriptural bounds. 

In the discourses cited it is apparent that the appeals 
for repentance or baptism were given within the dis- 
courses themselves, not afterwards. But the sermons 
of the New Testament, at the very beginning of Chris- 
tianity, were of the nature that would connect Jesus with 
the Old Testament prophecies, or would begin with the 
revealed Jehovah; they dealt with broad themes, sum- 
ming up religious facts from Old Testament to New. 
The religion of the Old Testament blossomed out into 
that of the New Testament; the containing chrysalis 
burst and the real content emerged in the Messiah. The 
discourses dealt broadly with the way of salvation and 
the meaning of the entire plan of God in Christ Jesus. 
Naturally enough the appeals were contained within the 
discourses because faith in Christ Jesus as the Messiah 
was the consummation of God’s entire preparational 
steps, and those who had been worshiping Jehovah 
merely within the beggarly elements of the preparational 
steps had to take the last and final step to be consistent 


86 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


with the real inner meaning of that in which they had 
believed and worshiped up to that point. The one great 
point in the New Testament discourses was to show 
that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah. 

But in these days every discourse is not directed to 
proving just one such point continually; or again, is the 
entire Old Testament with its fulfillment in the New 
Testament the text for every sermon. So comprehensive 
is the Christian system that in the liturgical churches an 
entire year is consumed in bringing out the various 
aspects of the Christ and the religion founded upon 
prophets and apostles with Him as the Chief Corner- 
stone; and in those denominations where the following 
of the Christian year does not prevail, the manifold 
aspects of the Christ and His religion may never be 
presented in their rounded fullness at all. If an entire 
year is now used to cover that which was then covered 
with one discourse or a few discourses, it is evident that 
one discourse will cover but one particular aspect, that 
not every discourse will end by proving that Jesus was 
the Messiah, that the themes will be narrower in scope, 
and that texts will seldom afford the comprehensive sweep 
of the New Testament discourses. True it is that that 
is no sermon which, in some way does not lead toward 
Christ or point to the necessity of faith in Him; but it 
is also true that consistency in discourse or in the laws 
and methods of discourse will not give opportunity to 
incorporate an appeal to unite with the Christian Church 
into every sermon that we preach. And rather than 
have nothing said at any time in the service on the 
relationship that every person should hold to the King- 
dom, it is better that a definite statement should be made 


THE PUBLIC APPEAL 87 


separately in itself. Our sermons certainly should con- 
tain ringing appeals for faith in Christ and for member- 
ship in the Church. But if the discourse is not of such 
nature or bearing that the appeal can be made naturally 
as germane to the particular discussion, it had better be 
left for separate statement. Then indeed, it will have 
far greater effect because of its separateness than if it 
were incorporated into the body of a sermon. Its very 
separateness causes it to stand out and to make it the 
more emphatic. 

The real question at issue is not whether the appeal 
for union with the congregation should be made; the 
question is how it should be made. The first point is 
that it should be made only on the basis of a statement 
of Scriptural fact. The New Testament discourses show 
us plainly that this statement of Scriptural fact always 
preceded the appeal, whether direct or implied, and that 
no appeal for repentance, faith, or baptism was ever 
made without it. The appeal should be made after the 
sermon, in order that the Word shall have had due 
course first. If announcements are made from the 
chancel after the sermon, the appeal should be made 
after the announcements, in order that its message may 
be carried away. 

The Scripture plainly shows the necessity of faith in 
Christ Jesus as the way of salvation. Any such state- 
ment of the necessity of faith in Christ as the way of 
salvation should be given, and the appeal or public in- 
vitation to unite with the Church should be based upon 
that. The statement should be given plainly and solidly. 
To the Jewish elders Peter declared boldly: “Neither is 
there salvation in any other, for there is none other name 


88 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


under heaven given among men whereby we must be 
saved.” That solid, unequivocal statement of Simon 
Peter can be used over and over again. No better, briefer, 
more compact statement can be found. ‘With the heart 
man believeth unto righteousness but with the mouth 
confession is made unto salvation” is another which, with 
its implications and connotations, can be driven home 
with telling effect. The foundation of the Church, “upon 
prophets and apostles built, with Christ as the chief 
cornerstone,” with the clear purpose of God in founding 
the Church, can be used to emphasize the necessity of 
organic connection. “I am the vine, ye are the branches. 
He that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth 
forth much fruit; for without me ye can do nothing” 
is a verse which shows the necessity of the organic con- 
nection and the inner heart connection also. “I am the 
door; by me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved” 
shows the entrance into the heavenly fold. “I am the 
way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the 
father but by me” is a verse whose meaning stands 
clear on the face of it. The man who is clear on the 
purpose of the Church will soon find ample material as 
a basis for the public appeals to the unchurched within 
his audience. To the chosen people were given the oracles 
of their own day for their own worship; but the advent 
of the Christ fulfilled the way of their salvation through 
the sacrifice of the Son once for all, and to the New 
Testament Church founded upon Him was given the 
means of grace for the complete salvation of souls. The 
oracles of the better covenant as Paul calls it, were given 
for the remission of sins. The discourses of the New 
Testament emphasize the remission of sins through the 


THE PUBLIC APPEAL 89 


name of the crucified, risen Christ. On the basis of 
these manifold Scriptural statements the public invita- 
tion or appeal can be made but it can be made only 
upon them, and indeed, the Scriptural quotations fre- 
quently should be given verbatim. 

The public appeal should never be made under the 
guise of prayer or addressed to sickly sentiment; there 
should be no camouflage or subterfuge about it. So 
frequently do pastors say: “Let us bow our heads in 
prayer.’ And then, instead of hearing a prayer as has 
been announced and as should be expected, some such 
appeal as the following is heard: “Are there any present 
who desire prayer for themselves? Are there none who 
desire to be prayed for? If so, just please raise your 
hands. Are there any who have lost father or mother, 
whose hearts are heavily burdened, who desire prayer? 
Raise your hands, please; yes, just raise your hands. 
That’s right; there’s one hand; there’s another; one more; 
two more; good. Are there none who have friends 
or relatives, brothers or sisters, whom they desire to be 
saved? Raise your hands. That’s good, one more hand, 
two more.” And so he goes on. When the hands stop 
going up the prayer begins but not before; and before 
the service closes the announcement is made that all 
who have raised their hands will please step into the 
side room to the left or just through this or that door. 
Many of the congregation go in also for the after-meet- 
ing, and there the same appeals to the emotions are made 
that have been made in the service, to produce the raising 
of hands. 

But the Church of Christ has descended to rather low 
level when resort must be had to camouflage and sub- 


90 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


terfuge to win adherents. Religion is not very com- 
prehensive when the emotions must be racked in order 
to induce faith in God and Christ, or to bring people into 
the Church. It is nauseating to hear appeals made for 
the raising of hands on the basis of such questions as 
family bereavements, the deaths of father or mother or 
other dear ones; in such cases the finer sentiments are 
prostituted, when the real object is to rouse the emotions, 
the feelings of the heart, to usher people into a side 
room and there convert them by an emotional conver- 
sion. If it is nauseating to hear such appeals knowing 
their purpose, it should be above the finer sentiments of 
any man in the ministry to use such questions or such 
methods of appeal. This is like trampling people’s hearts 
under foot, or walking rough shod over the holy ground 
of the bereaved heart. No highly sensitized soul can 
ever do it. Sin-consciousness, the oppression of the 
guilty heart or conscience is a different matter. But in- 
asmuch as religion is an upstanding affair that should 
permeate man’s entire consciousness, the appeal should 
be made to the entire man with all the faculties function- 
ing normally; religion is not a one-sided or one-com- 
partment affair having value for one compartment of 
the mind only. The real function of religion is to drive 
at sin, not to commit travesty upon the finer sentiments 
of a bereaved mourner; and in the light of this the 
appeal had better be made with upstanding erectness, 
driving mind, flashing eye aimed at the darts of the 
wicked, than to be done as it is so frequently done. In 
actual fact if the appeal is to be one-sided it had better 
be one-sided in the latter direction rather than in the 
former. 


PHES PUBLIC sAPPEAL 91 


But it need not be one-sided at all. It should be given 
with calm firmness, the firmness of certified faith; it 
should be dignified, open, direct; there should be no 
camouflage or subterfuge of prayer or anything else. 
Its basis should be the Scriptural basis of the necessity 
of faith in Christ Jesus for salvation; on the founding 
of the Church to preach the faith and administer the 
sacraments; on the Church as the only institution estab- 
lished by the Father for the salvation of souls; on the 
Church as the institution to which the means of salva- 
tion and the remission of sins have been entrusted; on 
the Church as God’s divine institution in human hands 
equipped to do God’s work with God’s own means. The 
Church has ample warrant for making her appeals for 
membership within her ranks, and she can make these 
appeals on the basis of her purpose in Christ and her 
sterling worth as God’s institution, without descending 
to camouflage, subterfuge, or any devious ways or 
methods. If the Church does not recognize her own 
dignity, certainly the world never will! 

The public appeal is sound as long as it is open, direct, 
dignified, and based upon solid statements and Scrip- 
tural ground. When it is given on this basis and in 
this attitude it is sane, sensible, rational, natural and 
well-balanced. The appeal is made to the entire con- 
sciousness and there is an enlightened consciousness to 
which appeal may be made. To make such an appeal 
during the church service is the most natural thing in 
the world. For if the men of the ministry believe that 
the Scripture and the Church are as valuable and as 
necessary to faith and salvation as we usually maintain 
they are, then the most logical thing in the world would 


92 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


be that both shall be emphasized to churched and un- 
churched, and, in the face of the fact that fifty-six per 
cent of the population is unchurched, that both be up- 
held and expounded with driving, pointed pungency. 
Furthermore, the Church is such a grand institution 
that the best thing that any man can do is to seek mem- 
bership. Men must be made to see the Church in her 
grandeur at her own true worth, and to see the blessed- 
ness and the privilege of being numbered in her ranks. 
The fellowship of believers is a spiritual company and 
it is indeed a blessing to any man to be numbered therein. 
The Church is God’s handiwork and workshop; in the 
Church’s worship faith is fashioned, and through the 
Church Militant we pass into the Church Triumphant. 
What could be more natural than that people should 
enter the communion of saints, the fellowship of believers, 
voluntarily of their own volition. That voluntariness 
should be encouraged; every legitimate means should be 
used to encourage it. The man who must be dragged 
into the Church, enticed, baited, scared or even coerced 
is not likely to be a cheerful worshiper ; his heart and his 
will are not likely to be embedded in the entire pro- 
ceeding. His heart will change if he is faithful to any 
degree because the self-working Word will produce the 
growth in grace. But far better it is if he comes will- 
ingly, cheerfully, and his willing cheerfulness is best 
guaranteed if he comes of his own volition. The battle 
that so frequently arises in the personal work is already 
fought within his own soul and he is already won. The 
public appeal on the basis of the Scriptural statement is 
the most natural, logical way to secure this. Indeed, the 


Lob POUBLICCAPPEATL 93 


public appeal in dignified fashion, is the logical sequitur 
of the Gospel itself. 

The public appeal does produce results... The Scrip- 
ture does its own perfect work as it testifies in its own 
behalf that it will. Tested by its own statements the 
Scripture proves its work and its workability. There 
is no reason why it should not. In the narratives of the 
Book of Acts men were convicted of their sin by heart- 
searching presentations; New ‘Testament conversions 
show the effect of plain, forceful preaching upon the 
human heart without the use of any extravagance or 
emotional pressure. If such effect could be produced 
by heart-searching presentations and by forceful preach- 
ing then, it can be produced now; for human nature has 
not changed, the human element in preaching in a God- 
saturated soul has not changed, the Scripture has not 
lost its efficacy, and the Holy Spirit is a living, active, 
operative personality now. The Scripture will do its 
work; the public appeal gathers the harvest produced by 
the operation of the Word. It encourages the voluntary 
expression of willingness to unite with the Church. With 
the heart men may believe unto righteousness; but if left 
to themselves they may hold back for long periods before 
the way may be opened for them to make confession 
with the mouth unto salvation. The inner urge of their 
faith may not be known. As the men pricked in their 
hearts by Peter’s sermon on Pentecost turned to each 
other and asked: ‘‘Men and brethren, what shall we do?” 





*If the writer may be pardoned for a personal reference, may 
he state that on the Sunday morning previous to the writing of 
this section, he issued his appeal, and as the congregation passed 
out the door, three persons announced to him that they would 
unite with the church. This he follows with personal work. 


94 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


and as Peter’s answer to the question gave them oppor- 
tunity to follow the leadings of their faith, so does the 
public appeal: give room for the expression of faith and 
guides them in the direction their faith shall take. In- 
stead of waiting for their question, it merely anticipates 
their question. It answers the questionings of their 
minds as to what they shall do, tells them plainly what 
their duty is, why it shall be done, all on a Scriptural 
basis, and also tells them how they shall go about doing 
it. They shall unite with God’s Church; and in order to 
do this in sensible, correct and orderly fashion, they 
shall see the pastor afterwards, shall give their names 
and addresses either to him or to the ushers, shall call 
upon the pastor personally or ring him during the week, 
and this is done that all things pertaining to their union 
with the Church shall be done decently and in order. 
There is absolutely no reason why men laboring in 
cities of considerable population, with unchurched peo- 
ple attending their services, shall not have people 
voluntarily announcing their desire of uniting with the 
Church. Evidently where such voluntary applications for 
membership are not made, there is a weakness, and it is 
just possible that the weakness may be the omission of 
the public appeal that people be guided in their duty, 
encouragement be given in voluntary application, and 
the way be opened for the expression of that volun- 
tariness. The use of the public appeal does not mean 
that any man shall or dare lean upon this alone for the 
accessions to his membership. The personal work dare 
never be omitted at the cost of fidelity. In fact all of 
these voluntary applications are nothing other than as- 
sured prospectives to be classified, shaped and arranged 


_ THE PUBLIC APPEAL 95 


through the spiritual clinic or clearing-house of personal 
work; the personal work becomes the more necessary 
because of the results of the appeal. The faith of many 
is crude or distorted; some are not baptized; others have 
been baptized but have little knowledge of the faith 
which they desire to profess. But in the great bulk of 
such cases the spiritual follow-up is easy; the voluntary 
application indicates that the faith is already there, and 
all that may be necessary is to shape the faith into the 
proper form. 

With this it is the same as with the securing of names 
for a personal work list—one of the finest fruits of the 
method is the incentive furnished the members of the 
congregation to work upon others. Members bringing 
their friends or neighbors who hear such appeals follow 
up the appeal heard in the service with their own 
appeals that their friends and neighbors unite with the 
congregation. Where no appeal is ever made or ever 
heard in the service, where no mention is ever made or 
the necessity of church membership is never brought to 
the fore, the lay members are prone to become lax in 
their duty. Not the least of the fruits is the inspiration 
furnished the laity to do their own share of evangeliza- 
tion. For along with the appeal to the unchurched goes 
the corollary appeal to the members that if they know 
of any prospective members they shall bring them in or 
shall win them, or shall advise the pastor that he may 
interview these prospects on the question. The two ap- 
peals should always be combined that no individuals may 
feel that they are singled out for concentrated fire. 


CHAPTER VII 
THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 


The very first point in the program of the Church 
must be to keep every man in the ministry alive to his 
duty as an evangelist. The local pastor is the key-man 
to the entire situation; the work of evangelizing stands 
or falls with him. If he does his full duty the work 
will be done; if he fails the work will fail. The pro- 
gram of the church must be addressed in systematic 
fashion to this main cog in the workings of the entire 
machine. The Church must see to it that every watch- 
man on the walls of Zion shall pace his station with an 
active foot and an open eye. 


CONGREGATIONAL EVANGELISM 


This is the more necessary because the pastor in the 
first place, as the keyman to the entire situation, holds 
power beyond his own personal ‘self. He holds the key 
to congregational evangelism. If he is sluggish his con- 
gregation will not evangelize. The congregations where 
the people are active in bringing in all they can find or 
persuade are the congregations where the pastors them- 
selves work at evangelizing and are alert in stimulating 
their people to do the same. An active evangelist at the 
head of a congregation will make that congregation grow. 
It will not grow as rapidly by far if the man in the pulpit 
must do all the evangelizing alone, unaided. But it will 

96 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 97 


grow. If the man in the pulpit is not an open, active 
evangelist with definite purpose the congregation will 
not grow even though catechumens be confirmed and 
individuals be added occasionally. For real congregational 
growth in numbers means the previous growth in inner 
grace which impels to outer expression in active effort. 

The greater power the pastor as the key-man holds 
is his position to gospelize his people correctly that they 
have the large, correct vision of the kingdom and their 
own duty toward it. He will instruct them, stimulate 
them, he will urge them; he will imbue them with the 
missionary spirit and endeavor to inculcate the zeal which 
is essential to lay activity. The local pastor is more 
than a mere personal evangelist; he is the educator, the 
gospelizer of his own people to make gospelizers out of 
them. Every man in the ministry must gospelize his 
people in the higher gospelism that they themselves shall 
go forth and gospelize. The Church must bend herself to 
keeping this key-man alert to this higher duty in order 
that double duty will be done. For the people of the 
congregation can be reached best through him and in 
many cases only through him. Some of them never read 
the official organs of the Church or any literature bearing 
upon the subject. They have the opportunities and they 
bear the responsibilities but they are not instructed to 
carry their part of the evangelizing program. It isy 
through the local pastor that the laity must be instructed, 
stimulated, and urged to do their gospelizing duty. 

But deeds speak louder than words; and deeds speak 
loudest when they re-enforce words. Conversely, words 
speak loudest when they are re-enforced by deeds. 
The real combination is the local pastor as an active 


98 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


evangelist and the people of the congregation as active 
evangelizers. The second reason why the Church must 
keep the local pastor alert to his higher gospelizing is 
that ideal evangelism must be congregational evangelism, 
which simply means pastor and people working together. 
The congregation is neither a flock perennially without 
a shepherd nor a shepherd without a flock but pastor 
and people combined. In the final analysis evangelism 
must be congregational, the entire congregation working 
together to bring the unchurched of the community to 
the foot of the cross. Inasmuch as the key-man is the 
natural leader the Church must lead him that he may 
lead. He can educate only when he leads, he can in- 
culcate a vision only when he himself holds a vision, he 
can urge only when he is industrious, he can imbue with 
zeal only when he is zealous. Inasmuch as the active 
effort and the executive leadership furnish the greater 
inspiration through the visible example, the inspiration 
for genuine congregational evangelism must come 
through the local pastors, and because of this increased 
power, the Church must see to it that the requirements 
for effective congregational evangelism are fulfilled. 

For one great element in the program of the Church 
“ must be the promotion of lay activity in making our con= 
gregations grow. An immense amount of education is 
necessary for this, and that education must take two 
directions. Some of the pastors must be educated. Some 
of them have had so little co-operation or response on 
the part of their people that they have become accustomed 
to do all the work of securing accessions by themselves. 
Others are not in the least awake to the power of an 
awakened laity nor have they made much effort to enlist 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 8) 


the aid of the laity in this important work. For various 
reasons some men have tended to believe that little can 
or need be expected from the laity. Wherever the fault 
may lie, the doing of this work by the ministry alone, 
with no urge to the laity expressed, is a grievous error. 
It is worse. It educates the people in complacent 
laziness; it distorts the vision of the people in the pews 
and perverts their sense of duty; it stunts and stultifies 
them in their Christian growth and Christian service; 
it robs them of one of the finest privileges granted to 
the sons of God in the bringing in of souls, and robs 
them also of one of the finest joys that the child of God 
can know. When no effort has ever been made by the 
pastor to enlist his people in a co-operative work, the 
co-partnership in the work of the kingdom is denied and 
the laity given a minor, inferior place in the economy 
of God. It is high time that these manifold perversions 
be stopped. Some men have been disappointed in their 
efforts to enlist lay activity; but he who contends, as a 
principle, that lay activity in evangelism is only a whim, 
a side issue, is not awake to the Scripture or to the facts 
of Christian life and the history of many congregations. 
There is a power in our congregations, a tremendous 
power, a power beyond the recognition of the laity them- 
selves, a power that needs only to be awakened, in- 
structed, directed, and harnessed to the work of the 
Kingdom. In too many congregations at the present 
time that power is a giant asleep, latent and unused. 
On the other hand there is an immense amount of 
education needed by the laity. They must be taught that 
so far as winning souls is concerned, there are no dis- 
tinctions or differences to be based upon ordination; in 


100 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


this sphere at least, whatever it may be in other direc- 
tions in the minds of some, the Church cannot be divided 
into clergy and laity except for purposes of language 
clearness. May it be repeated that a congregation nor- 
mally is not a pastor without a people nor a people with- 
out a pastor. In past days, and in only too many places 
even in present days, there was and still persists, an idea 
that the bringing of people into the Church is the work 
of the pastor alone. The worst perversion arises when 
they think that this is what they “hire” him for! They 
pay their “quarterly” amount to the treasury and delegate 
their duties to him by proxy! There always has been 
and is yet too much reliance on salvation by inert faith 
instead of recognition of service. Works do not save 
but they are the results and evidences of the faith that 
does save. St. Isadore prayed for a harvest but left his 
fields to be tilled by the angels; St. Isadore has a woeful 
host of followers to canonize his method! Human nature 
loves to shirk or to shift responsibility. There is too 
much idle complacency in the sheer folded hands of the 
pews. The Church is not a crusade alone nor a sheep- 
fold alone but a combination of both. There are too many 
of the laity who believe that the pastor is the man to do 
the entire work of the Kingdom, and that their own 
share of the work stops with their occasional rest in the 
pews and gift to the treasury. And there are some 
who even think they are doing the pastor a favor if they 
come to church! 

To the church at Sardis John wrote: “I know thy 
works that thou hast a name that thou livest and art 
dead.” To the church at Laodicea was written: “I know 
thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 101 


thou were cold or hot. So then, because thou art luke- 
warm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out my 
movth.” The congregation that is cold will win but few 
and the Lord’s work will not be done; the congrega- 
tion that is warm with love will be warm with zeal and 
will win many because of its true Christian faith and 
Christian activity for the Kingdom. 

For the congregation is the seat of power in the Church 
and it is the unit of organized authority. People become 
members of the Church universal only through member- 
ship in the local congregation. The Church universal 
grows only through the growth of the local congrega- 
tions. If local congregations should all disappear there 
would be no Church universal. When local congrega- 
tions are weak the Church universal is weak; when local 
congregations grow strong the Church universal has 
power. In final analysis the strength of the Church 
depends upon the strength of her individual members ; 
and the whole Church will be strong only as her individual 
members are consecrated to the full program and pur- 
pose of God. Evangelism finally simmers down to con- 
gregational evangelism, to the consecrated labor of each 
child of God. 


THE PRIESTHOOD OF BELIEVERS 


For the work of the Kingdom must be done because 
the Kingdom must grow by the express will of the Lord, 
and men are the instruments in the hands of God to bring 
about the extension of it. Every man has his respon- 
sibility in and for the Kingdom, and he tought not try to 
get away from it. Strange it is that men clamor for their 
rights, liberties and privileges while they say so little 


102 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


about their duties and responsibilities. But every right, 
liberty or privilege carries with it a corresponding duty, 
and the right to the advantages of the kingdom carries 
with it the responsibility of duties toward the kingdom. 
The liberty that every man enjoys through the freedom 
with which the Christ has made him free, entails the 
duty to free men everywhere from the bondage of sin 
and death. The privilege that men have in knowing the 
true Jehovah through His revelation and through their 
own union with Christ Jesus; the privilege of worship- 
ing the true, merciful God; the privilege of prayer, of 
being able to come to the throne of grace and cry Abba, 
Father; the privilege of the sacraments given for the 
remission of sins; all these blessed privileges which pro- 
duce the joy of salvation and the peace which passeth all 
understanding, bring down upon their fortunate pos- 
sessors the duty and responsibility of handing on these 
heritages to all possible others that they too, shall enjoy 
like blessedness. The right to the throne of grace and 
the liberty in Christ carries with it the duty and the 
responsibility to bring others into the same relation of 
freedom and the same direct personal relation to God. 

For the relation of every man to God is direct, per- 
sonal and individual. Luther proclaimed to the world 
the priesthood of all believers. Every man was his own 
priest; no intervening ordained priest of the church was 
necessary to mediate between man and God. Salvation 
was not to be hedged in or about with priestly regula- 
tions, prohibitions, penances, counted prayers, compulsory 
auricular confessions, masses, purgatories, priestly re- 
mission of sin by priestly power, the absolute binding or 
loosing of the soul in the name and through the authority 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 103 


of the church. Henceforth no man should sit constantly 
beneath a judgment seat, having some other human to 
hold power over him for either salvation or perdition. 
There was to be no penance and no verdict on the basis 
of human prescriptions. Attrition should be changed to 
contrition in order that the open and the contrite heart 
should repent toward God and bring forth fruits worthy 
of repentance. The liberty in Christ Jesus should be the 
inspiriting power for a new affection to displace the 
bondage of priestly regulations and an unwholesome 
fear. The Scriptural relation between man and God was 
restored; it should be direct, personal, individual. For 
at the time of the Crucifixion the veil of the temple had 
been rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the 
heavenly holy of holies with its throne of grace was 
open to direct approach without priestly intervention or 
priestly ceremonials. 

It must be apparent that a man’s salvation depends upon 
himself. It depends upon his own attitude, upon his 
own faith. There is no such thing as salvation by proxy 
nor salvation by character or works. A man’s salvation 
does not depend upon the ceremonials of the Church over 
him or upon him after he is dead. His fate is sealed 
from the moment of his death; his record is written and 
in the place of departed spirits he awaits the Judgment 
Day. “It is given unto man once to die; then cometh the 
judgment.” In the face of this fact the duty of the Church 
is to produce faith in the man, within his own heart; 
there is no other way to save him. Since “faith cometh 
by hearing and hearing by the Word” the man must be 
in the Church to hear the Word. The sacraments are 
committed to the Church, and they are designed Scriptur- 


104 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


ally for the forgiveness of sin; but unless the man be 
in the Church and exercise his faith he will not partake 
of the sacrament nor live up to his baptismal covenant. 
Without faith all that the Church has or does avails him 
nothing; the man himself must come to the foot of the 
Cross. Habakkuk’s truth, “The just shall live by faith” 
cited by Paul and used by Paul as the basis of all his 
theology is the only true foundation for the Christian 
religion or for the hope of heaven. A free, living faith, 
active in its own free exercise, is the direct relation that 
must exist between man and God. For this is the faith 
that saves. 

In the light of this relationship to God through the 
priesthood of all believers, the duties and responsibilities 
of every man to exercise that free faith in behalf of his 
fellowmen must be apparent. If it is the living faith that 
saves, every priest must do all he can to bring others 
to that same vital faith. And since the veil was rent in 
twain, every man has been his own priest to bring him- 
self direct to God through his own faith. If every man 
is his own priest to offer his own oblations, his own pray- 
ers, his services, his thanksgivings, when and where and 
how he would through the name of Christ, then every 
man as a priest has his priestly duty to perform. He 
must bring his fellowmen into the same relation to God. 

No longer, then, is it the duty of the pastor alone to 
bring people into the Church. The man who holds to 
this view is shirking the duties of his lay priesthood. 
No man can find warrant for saying that ordination alone 
gives power and authority to save souls or to bring souls 
into the kingdom. The day when all men believed that 
ordination conferred a character indelibilis which made 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 105 


the priesthood to be an order different from other men 
disappeared with the Reformation; the doctrine is not 
Scriptural and consequently has no place in the confes- 
sions of an evangelical church. The ordained man must 
bring souls into the Kingdom but the work of bringing 
souls into the kingdom is certainly not confined to him 
alone. It is a duty devolving upon every member of 
and in the Kingdom, and the exercise of that duty is the 
natural exercise of vital faith. If the ordained man 
brings in more than others it is because he devotes his 
time to the Kingdom as a special vocation, and because 
he has special training for it. But such work is the work 
of faith, Every man in the Kingdom is supposed to be 
there because he has faith, and he is supposed to work 
for the Kingdom because of that same faith. No other 
man can do his work for him by proxy; for as faith is 
an individual, personal element, so the works which flow 
from faith must be individual, personal works likewise, 
and every man must put his own faith to work because 
of its personal essence. There can be no such things 
as works of super-erogation, nor can the works of one 
be credited to some other on the record books of heaven. 
To evangelize is the natural work of every Christian 
soul; every church member owes it to God, to his neigh- 
bor, and to his own faith, that he bring in as many as he 
can. And he cannot ask any other man to do the work 
that he is supposed to do. For faith is personal and its 
resulting works must necessarily be the same. 


MISSIONARY ZEAL 


Though the man may be convinced that it is his duty 
to bring souls into the kingdom, the motive may be lack- 


106 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


ing. There must be a love for souls, a missionary zeal, 
and unless that love for souls or that missionary zeal is 
present, little work will be done. Love for souls and 
missionary zeal are not identical; for missionary zeal 
may be the parochial zeal which desires to see the local 
congregation grow and never sees the real question at 
issue. Such a missionary zeal may be selfish, it may be 
mere enthusiasm, it is always shortsighted. It may even 
be the fire of the proselytizer or the bigotry of the zealot. 
But for practical reasons this section is headed as it is; 
the justice of secular law declares that every man must 
be considered innocent until he is proved guilty and the 
charity of the Christian can assume no less. In the work 
of God there should be no ulterior motives and the dis- 
cussion will proceed on the high ground that there are 
not. Let us take it for granted that the perversions of 
the proselytizer and the single-track spirit of the bigot 
are merely twisted concepts on the question of conver- 
sion, faults of mind but not of heart. There must be 
a zeal for souls, which desires as God desires—not the 
death of a sinner but that he may turn from his wicked- 
ness and live. And the missionary zeal must be per- 
meated with love of souls, must, indeed, be identical with 
it. The desire of the Christian must be that the people 
of the world be saved. | 
In final analysis this again, like all other questions in 
the work of the Kingdom, resolves itself to faith. But 
inasmuch as matters must be specific, not general, it 
may be termed a matter of spiritual sluggishness, or of 
its counterpart, spiritual activity. When Andrew came 
in contact with Jesus and became convinced of His 
identity, he forthwith found his brother Simon and fo 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 107 


him stated that he had found the Messiah; and on the 
next day when Philip experienced the same contact and 
conviction, he immediately brought Nathanael as Andrew 
had brought Simon Peter. These devout Jews, waiting 
in fond anticipation for the advent of the promised Mes- 
siah, rejoiced so greatly in finding Him that their first 
acts were to bring their brothers and their friends to 
the Messiah that these might experience the same joy 
in the discovery that they, themselves, had. This was a 
true, religious, missionary zeal. It was a personal joy 
in the Kingdom through finding the Christ, a personal 
faith in Him as the Messiah, and a personal spiritual act 
in bringing others into the same relation that they them- 
selves enjoyed. 

One of the first requisites for such missionary zeal 
must be the conviction of truth that these disciples had. 
The Jewish nation produced a score of false Christs but 
these men were convinced of the integrity and identity 
of the true. Their joy arose from that conviction of 
that truth. The world is full of false religions, peculiar 
fanatical sects, ites and isms of every shade and grade 
and description. The misguided apostles of these mis- 
taken isms are fanatical in their zeal, and they endeavor 
to convert everyone to their beliefs; they have a zeal 
worthy of a far nobler cause. There are members of 
various denominations holding to pet or specific religious 
theories or beliefs who endeavor to proselyte every pos- 
sible soul to their way of interpretation. Their truth 
may be one-sided or it may be but a half-truth or less, 
yet they spend every available penny, minute, as well 
as every ounce of energy in their missionary zeal for 
their espoused cause. 


108 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


It is a patent fact that the possession of a large, whole, 
well-rounded truth so molds and poises a man that its 
fullness and balance prevents him from becoming a 
bigot. This fact is a favorable commentary on the in- 
fluence of a full Gospel and a sensible means of grace 
on the character and temperament of the individual. | 
The comprehensiveness of a full, wholesome truth 
stabilizes a man whereas the narrowness of a peculiar 
tenet impels the mind to run in that one narrow groove. 
Narrowness often attracts narrowness in potentiality, and 
always produces narrowness as a result; as water seeks 
its level so does the narrow truth or half-truth attract 
the shallow mind, and the shallow mind naturally 
gravitates toward the narrow truth. The very narrow- 
ness of such an idea can fasten itself upon any mind the 
easier because of its narrowness. To the shallow or 
narrow mind such a bit of truth can and does assume 
the size of the whole truth, and when there is an urge, 
external or internal, to push such a bit of truth or half- 
truth, the mind to which such an idea is a huge moun- 
tain of truth pushes such an idea with a zeal all out of 
proportion to its value. Because such a narrow idea is 
more easily grasped it is the more easily pushed. It 
goes faster and farther. The American people love to 
be humbugged. The nearly three hundred varieties of 
religion enumerated by the United States census attest 
to the truth of Barnum’s statement! And when the 
poorly co-ordinated mind either devours or is devoured 
by, such a poorly co-ordinated truth, the zeal is likely to 
be the stronger for the simple reason that the poor 
co-ordination of mind throws the major weight or por- 
tion of the sum total consciousness to the feelings. In 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 109 


such natures the conviction of the much-magnified bit of 
truth can easily become an obsession and the promoting 
zeal a fanaticism. 

But although the poise of a full, well-balanced truth 
excludes bigotry and fanaticism, the zeal should be there 
nevertheless. In fact the zeal should be stronger than 
ever, though the zeal will be as well regulated as the 
mind is well-poised. Only too often this poise of whole- 
some truth degenerates into spiritual sluggishness, a con- 
dition of self-satisfaction which drifts along and exercises 
no active effort in behalf of the truth it holds. It is 
undeniable that too many people who hold to a fully 
rounded truth are sluggish in the extension of it. None 
but a bigot will become a wild zealot; the equilibrium 
in the truth held will stand in direct ratio to the equilibra- 
tion produced in the possessing mind. But every man 
who holds to such a fine body of truth as the entire Scrip- 
ture gives us in Christ, and whom that body of truth has 
gripped in firm conviction, should be a constant, per- 
sistent evangelist for and in his Christian truth. To him 
the great facts of his Christian truth and the sin it fights 
down must mean a love of souls and a missionary zeal 
for the saving of them. 

The apostle Paul rejoiced over the faith of some of 
his congregations. The question is whether many of 
our Christian people properly value their own faith, and 
consequently, whether they are thankful enough that 
they are Christians. Every man will rejoice if he has a 
stroke of good financial fortune; some are thankful if 
and when they enjoy good health; others rejoice if they 
have musical ability or intellectual culture; but only too 
few rejoice that they are Christians, the children of God. 


LA ir SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


It is the Scriptural duty of every Christian to be a mis- 
sionary ; but, aside from all considerations of duty, there 
should be a joy in active soul-work. The emphasis of 
mere duty will never inspire people to evangelize with a 
whole heart; love must be the fulfilling of the law. The 
love of Christ must inspire the love for souls and there 
will be no love for souls where there is no love for Christ. 
The law of Christ is the law of love, which makes love 
a motive, law a principle, and takes all legalism out of 
duty. Christian people must love their Lord, must love 
their fellowmen, must love their church as God’s divine 
institution above all earthly things; they must love to see 
their church grow, to see their fellowmen brought to 
faith in Christ, and to see their fellow-members grow 
in grace and knowledge. When this comes to pass the 
members of the congregation at work will bring in others 
constantly. The proper missionary zeal will be presen’ 
and will do its work. 


Co-LABORERS WITH GoD 


Because of the spirit in many which believes that it 
is the work of the minister, not of the laity, to bring 
souls into the Kingdom, and because of the sluggishness 
which characterizes only too many church members, one 
of the first facts which must be impressed upon the 
consciousness of the congregations is the fact that build- 
ing up the church is not a one-man work. In I Cor. 3:9 
and again in II Cor. 6:1 Paul designates himself and 
the ministry as “workers together with’ God, as “co- 
laborers with God;” and from the consideration of the 
priesthood of believers it is evident that the layman is a 
co-laborer with God precisely as the pastor, though in 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 111 


a different sphere and probably to lesser degree. The 
best thing that the pastor can do is to tell the people 
clearly in the plainest sort of Anglo-Saxon that building 
the Kingdom is not his work alone (a one-man job). 
Any congregation which is purely a one-man organiza- 
tion is bound to limp, no matter whether that one man 
is the pastor or a layman. Inasmuch as the salvation 
of souls is incumbent upon all church members, lay and 
clerical; inasmuch as vital faith cannot be spiritually 
sluggish; and inasmuch as the Kingdom is so big and 
so important that it requires the efforts of all its subjects, 
evangelism becomes a co-operative work. No pastor 
can ever work alone and succeed as he should if his 
people do not help; no group of lay members can or 
will do much work if they have no leader. Pastor and 
people must work together. 

That working together for the Lord and with the 
Lord may take the form of mere mutual co-operation 
without organization. All members of the congregation 
should be on the constant lookout for prospective mem- 
bers. They themselves should be active evangelists and 
should speak to neighbors and friends. Needless to say 
every member should be an active moral supporter of 
the Church in the full, complete sense of the word. If 
he is, he will be on the watch for newcomers, for those 
who have moved into his neighborhood; he will discover 
their religious connections, invite them to accompany 
him to the services of his church. Once there he will 
see to it that they meet quite a few of the members, that 
they feel at home in the service and that they are wel- 
come, that their presence is really desired. He will pilot 
them through the service that they may participate in 


112 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


the liturgy nor get lost in the paging of the hymn-book. 
He will converse with them about his church and the 
service afterwards to draw them out and will discover 
how they stand on the entire religious question. And 
he will keep his pastor in close touch with the situation 
that they may work together on the case to final success. 

Nor will it stop here. Some people are weak on 
what is usually called soul-winning; others are strong. 
But people must all start somewhere some time, and 
people become strong only through exercise and active 
effort. Not every apprentice will become an expert but 
certainly every expert was once an apprentice. The 
weakness is that most people make no active effort in 
this direction. It is not a case of apprenticeship or ex- 
pertness; it is a case of every Christian doing what he 
can where and when he can, to influence all possible in- 
dividuals toward the church and into it. 

To lay down methods of work for lay people is ex- 
ceedingly difficult. In every case there is a double per- 
sonal equation; it becomes a case of the capabilities and 
temperament of the individual doing the work and the 
temperament of the individual worked upon; and as 
described in the chapter on personal work as furthered 
by the ministry, it includes the religious antecedents, 
the mode of thought, the manner of life, the conditions 
and circumstances surrounding the prospective member. 
Whole books have been written on this question of lay 
work in evangelization; books on personal work for 
clergy and laity are to be had. They cover many types 
of cases and describe various methods. But no two 
people are precisely alike; not being alike they will react 
differently to approaches by other people on all possible 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 113 


questions, particularly on the religious question. In 
view of this it is not easy to lay down rules for such 
work. Human nature may be pretty much the same 
the world over, taken in the large; but temperaments and 
dispositions are not molded into stereotyped forms. Each 
individual may profit by the experiences of others and 
school himself for his work to the greatest possible pro- 
ficiency for him; to this extent he may well follow texts 
on the question, and books descriptive of methods used. 
The study of such books may also tend to give him 
greater confidence in himself and produce more in- 
itiative. But a spiritual clinic to cover methods of ap- 
proach and of work in all cases is practically an im- 
possibility. 

For instance, here is a layman whose first questiott is 
also his final question, to which question he hangs on 
persistently through all the counter arguments and pos- 
sible excuses adduced by his adversaries on the whole 
church question; to everything negative he rejoins: “Yes, 
but what are you going to do when you die?” Un- 
answerable as it is, and effective as it is in some cases, 
it would be as foolish to put forth this as the one and 
only or the dominant argument to use for all cases as 
it would be to prescribe quinine for all the physical ills 
of mankind. Scripturai, too, it is, for Paul wrote: 
“Knowing therefore, the terror of the Lord, we per- 
suade men;” yet despite its finality in logic, its real place 
in the evangelizing program is as a heavy cudgel upon 
the head of the sinner as a law to precede grace and to 
bring him to his knees. Here may be another stanch 
layman who has a stock question which he frequently 
takes to his acquaintances; his standard approach may 


114 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


be: “I never see you go to church, Blank; don’t you go 
anywhere or belong anywhere?” If the answer is en- 
couraging he follows it up himself and the pastor hears 
of it also. If the answer is exceedingly discouraging or 
derogatory his only answer is: “Well, I have belonged 
for twenty years. Before I joined I never was anything 
much, I never had anything much, and I never did any- 
thing much. It’s the best thing I ever did and the best 
thing any man can do.” This is a fine testimony for 
the benefits accruing for church membership; but to 
render such testimony to some self-satisfied individual 
who already thinks he is much, who is well-heeled with 
this world’s goods and is promoting a prosperous busi- 
ness, would be of little value. Such a hard-headed per- 
son had better be asked what he will do when he dies. 
The leprous Lazarus at the gate with dogs licking his 
sores needs the comforting assurances of the grace of 
God in Christ; the rich man clothed in purple and fine 
linen, and faring sumptuously every day, might require 
some sturdy thunderings from Mt. Sinai. The attitude 
of the subject can be the only criterion on the method 
to be used, and plain, sanctified common sense must 
guide the worker. For there is no hard and fast rule 
to apply to all cases alike. 

These are but simple illustrations; they do not go 
deeply in the spiritual clinic process nor is that their aim. 
But they show that if the pastor of the congregation 
emphasizes the fact that enlarging the Kingdom is not a 
one-man work, that each member shall be a missionary 
wherever and whenever he can, the members will be 
stirred to missionary consciousness, and in their own 
individual way will be able to do a great deal. If many 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 115 


members in the congregation are incited to become alert 
to such work the congregation will grow, even though 
the efforts be unorganized and be adjudged desultory by 
those who have progressed further in personal evangelism: 
For such work with such questioning as has been de- 
scribed with illustration, any congregation and any pas- 
tor can propagate. It is possible for anyone anywhere. 
And though this is but a first step, it is a first step 
which must be taken or there will never be any steps 
thereafter. For each and every Christian should do his 
share of evangelizing work for the Church as best he 
can and wherever opportunity presents itself. The mis- 
sionary zeal of each should prompt him to speak to 
others and propagate the kingdom at every opportunity. 
Even if people are weak at soul-winning, if they never 
can become good soul-winners despite all possible train- 
ing, they can at least sound out people and report pros- 
pects to the pastor or to the officers of the congregation. 
Surely any individual can do this much because it is 
easily done and it is little enough to ask. 

Further progress can be made when the pastor makes 
arrangements with his people to accompany them to the 
homes for personal interview of prospects. This should 
be done wherever possible. At times active laymen may 
render some such report as follows: “Pastor, go up to 
Jomcnapel Street and ‘get the, Blanks: » I -haveyit all 
clinched for you. All you need to do is to go.” Blessed 
is the man in the ministry who has such experiences. 
In other cases a layman may report that he believes 
such and such people may be secured; in such cases 
arrangements should be made with the laymen report- 
ing that the two go to the house together. Other lay- 


116 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


men, more intrepid, may come with some such state- 
ment as this: “If you are willing to go with me some 
time, I believe that we can get So-and-So.” Needless 
to say, when the matter has progressed to this stage the 
effort is usually crowned with success. This co- 
operative effort of pastor and laymen accompanying each 
other is a most excellent method. It is highly recom- 
mended to pastors and laity alike. It is excellent as a 
piece of co-operation, it produces better results in actual 
numbers, and is excellent also as a training school. 

From this point the work may develop into having 
laymen visit homes of prospects in teams of two. It 
puts the men upon their own resources and compels them 
to make their way alone. Christian men of good spirit, 
strong faith, and well-balanced temperament can usually 
get along very well in such visits as these. It is a 
valuable asset to any congregation to have men willing 
to go on such work; it is also a fine spiritual exercise 
for the evangelists who go. For faith leads unto faith 
and there will be greater faith thereafter. 

Thus far the work has been unorganized. It has been 
inspired by the pastor, and so far as sending laymen is 
concerned, it has been directed by him. But it is fine 
if the congregation can maintain a band of soul-winners 
who meet upon occasion, receive instruction, compare 
notes and experiences, and stand ready to go wherever 
they may be sent. There are congregations so organized, 
and the work these bands of soul-winners do is a tre- 
mendous asset to the congregation and to the kingdom. 
If such organization can be effected, if such instruction . 
can be given by the pastor, and if such a clearinghouse 
of experiences can be had, there is a powerhouse in the 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 117 


congregation generating a real energy which will ramify 
to its outermost limits. Such an organization would 
benefit the average congregation easily as much as any 
other one organization in it because it is purely spiritual, 
organized for a purely spiritual purpose; where such a 
well-functioning organization is found, the congrega- 
tion is prosperous, aggressive, and filled with vitality. 

In lieu of such an organization there should be at 
least a definite plan directed by the pastor, in which every 
member of the congregation is urged to evangelize all he 
can. An aggressive program asking all members to be 
active in bringing in all they can, must be pushed. It 
may not produce as much as well-organized efforts may 
produce, or in some localities it might produce more; 
but it does enlist many members and it holds the mis- 
sionary idea before the entire congregation. Surely the 
Kingdom can demand no less than this. 

Many pastors and congregations institute membership 
campaigns to cover the period from September to 
Easter or to Pentecost. Instances might be cited where 
congregations set a goal of one hundred members from 
September to Easter or Pentecost and the goal of one 
hundred was over-reached. There is an arithmetical or 
mathematical element entering into such goal-setting 
which sounds somewhat at variance with soul-saving. 
But there is no need to quibble over terms. In final 
reality the term “the unsaved” is not a graceful term 
to use, though we hear it day after day in religious par- 
lance on the question of evangelism; the term “un- 
churched” is better. But no matter how such a word 
may sound, such goal-setting does serve to inspire the 
membership with zeal for accessions, and in this it does 


118 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


the Kingdom a definite service. The net may bring good 
and bad, but in this it is no different from all the work 
that we do; year after year without goal-setting we have 
many to slip back into the world again by whatever means 
we use. Let no man cry down such goal-setting pro- 
cedure on the mere basis of the mathematical element, 
in that it sounds so much like the militant “million or 
more’ that we sometimes hear in the denominations 
everywhere. The man in the ministry may make up his 
own mind privately that he will secure one hundred; 
but he has no Scriptural right to make up his mind with- 
out enlisting his people in the effort to win the goal. 
The co-laborer plan of Corinthians, the doctrine of the 
priesthood of all believers, the examples of Andrew and 
Philip, and the fact that soul-winning is a co-operative 
work demanding the labor of all, demands that all shall 
set their hearts and hands to the work. Goal-setting is 
not soul getting but it does get souls. For no man 
can look down into the hearts of people to read with 
precision the degree of faith there; and when such 
goal-setting inspires the membership to go forth and 
bring in all they can, such goal-setting does mean soul- 
getting, for the preached Word is a means of grace, and 
is necessarily a builder of sanctification as it is a builder 
of faith. 

Such co-operative work by and within the congrega- 
tion will place evangelism where it belongs—within the 
congregation itself. No matter what theories of church 
polity any communion may hold, in final analysis the 
work must be done in and by the local congregation. 
No matter what views men may hold as to faith and 
salvation, in last analysis faith is an individual, personal 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 119 


element, and even the most ardent Romanist can do 
nothing other than hold out the cross of Christ. No 
matter how much men may cry down individualism, 
it is the individual man who must give his own offering 
to support the Church, must have his own heart to be 
reconciled to God and must see to it that the human 
end of the reconciliation is cared for my himself. So 
must the human end of the work of the Kingdom be done 
by individual units. As Paul Lawrence Dunbar has it: 


“And my affairs can run along, or wait till I 
get through, 

Nobody else can do the job that God marked 
out for you.” 


The application is plain; no one can fill the place of the 
man in church or do the work of the man in the King- 
dom but the man himself. 

But in union there is strength and in co-operation 
there is inspiration added unto strength. As faith leads 
unto faith so does strength add unto strength. There 
is inspiration in numbers. One working member will 
inspire another; one working member has ground on 
which to appeal to another. As we are heirs of God 
and joint-heirs with Christ, as we partake of the suffer- 
ings of Christ that we may partake of the glory, as we 
are partakers with the saints in light, so we must be 
partakers of the work of the Church Militant that we 
may partake of the praises about the throne. All the 
work of the Kingdom is done through the fellowship 
of believers, and this, as concerns the human units, means 
a co-operative work. 

There is no need here to give space to any disserta- 


120 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


tion on prayer. But the prayer element must be a large 
factor in any program of soul-winning for ‘The fer- 
vent, effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” 
The praying and the working must go together; they 
must inspire and re-enforce each other. He who desires 
the salvation of a fellowman will pray that that fellow- 
man be brought to faith, and he who prays such heart- 
felt prayer will speedily go to work to put his prayer 
into practise. The man of the ministry must pray his 
own little sentence petitions before he enters the homes 
where his personal work is to be done; and the prayers 
before the altar must contain petitions that Christian 
people give themselves to God as willing instruments for 
the saving of souls. The petition in the Lord’s Prayer: 
“Thy kingdom come,” requires elaboration in the chancel 
prayers that the members of the church become inspired 
to fulfill that petition by extending the Kingdom. 

In some of the mission stations in Korea the natives 
are not received into the Church until they show the 
evidence of their good faith by bringing others to the 
Christian services and working upon them to convert 
them to Christianity. This is an inspiring example to 
the members of the churches in the homeland. When 
Christian people love their Lord and their fellowmen 
as they should, when they love their church as God’s 
divine institution above all earthly things, they will love 
to see the unchurched brought into the Kingdom, and 
they will love to see their fellow-members grow in grace 
and knowledge. When this comes to pass they will 
bring in people constantly, and the work of the pastor 
in the co-operative effort will be mainly follow-up work, 
and the educational work of instructing the neophytes 


THE CONGREGATION AT WORK 121 


in Christian faith. In reality this is as it should be. 
The members should be so active in bringing people into 
the Kingdom that the pastor would serve as re-enforcer 
and instructor, to handle difficult or complicated cases 
only, and to serve as instructor to his people that they 
themselves might be able to handle any ordinary case 
of discipleship. Apollos had the zeal for the Kingdom 
though he did not have the knowledge. In his case 
the knowledge was given, Our congregations should 
have Apolloses, filled with zeal to propagate the Master’s 
cause; and in cases where the inexpert Apolloses failed, 
there the pastor might go to reason with some obstrep- 
erous Felix, Festus, or Agrippa. The priesthood of 
believers is a New Testament fact; no less a New Testa- 
ment fact is the co-laborer plan of Corinthians. It 
remains for the followers of Christ to put both into 
execution. 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE ADULT CATECHETICAL CLASS 


The names for the list by which the pastor works in 
his own personal work; the homes he visits and the peo- 
ple he finds; the results of the public appeal; and the 
people discovered by the work of the congregation, all 
these will furnish material for a class of adults to be 
instructed in the Christian faith. But the adult class is 
found only in those communions which have held to 
the catechism and to the Church’s rite of confirmation. 
Those denominations laying the stress upon the emotional 
conversion have stopped with the religious experience 
generated through the conversion. Some denominations 
have encouraged and some congregations have instituted 
the “Communicant’s Class” or something akin to it, by 
which the children and young ‘people uniting with the 
Church through the program of decision day are in- 
structed several Sunday afternoons in Christian duty. 
The denominations practising baptism by immersion 
ground their converts solidly in the tenets pertaining to 
their interpretation of baptism previous to the immersion 
and reception into the congregation. But in America 
the class for adult confirmation is found only, or at least 
mainly, among Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and 
Lutherans. 

122 


THE ADULT CATECHETICAL CLASS 123 


THE NECESSITY FOR THE INSTRUCTION 


The necessity for instructing prospective church mem- 
bers should be patent at the outset. There is no need 
here to dwell at length on the necessity of creeds. A 
creedless religion is a paradox. If denominations hold 
to no particular confessions which are dear to them, 
they must look their own situations in the face and govern 
themselves accordingly; those who do hold a distinctive 
faith must teach it. However, on mere practical religious 
grounds, from the angle of differences in biblical inter- 
pretation, the fact of Uncle Sam’s more than two hun- 
dred and fifty seven varieties should show that if any 
man is to be a loyal church member he should be grounded 
in the truth, sufficiently grounded to resist the proselyting 
assaults of ites and isms and fanatical sects. So many 
church members are falling constantly into the pitfalls 
of Saturday worship, of Millennialism, of Christian 
Science’s deified psychology, that every man should be 
glad indeed to instruct his prospective adult members 
in order that they may be grounded in the truth of the 
Scripture. From a practical point of view it should be 
plain that any individual uniting with the church should 
know what the Church believes, and he should know the 
particular confessions or tenets of his denominational 
choice. Jf the Scripture is correct that children should 
be baptized, the prospective members of the congre- 
gation should know it and the Biblical argument. If the 
Lord’s Supper is more than a mere memorial or a mere 
testimony to the faith of the participant, the prospective 
communicant should know it and know the grounds for 
it. If a man is saved by faith alone, he should know 


124 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


the object of that faith. If Christ is the Saviour of all 
men, and if there is no salvation outside of Him of 
which man knows anything, the prospective candidate 
for membership should know it. If Christ was true 
God as well as true man, then the deity should be made 
plain. If spiritualism, necromancy, suicide, and kindred 
other things are forbidden by the law of God, then the 
positive compass of that moral law must be explained 
that its comprehensiveness may stand forth. If the mere 
subjective feelings and random opinions of man are 
worthless as religious grounds, then the solid objective 
foundations for religion must be explained, that the pit- 
falls be recognized and avoided. If the real objective 
foundations for the Christian religion come from the 
Bible, not from the dictionary, not from the study of a 
religious instinct akin to some Polynesian Anthropology, 
not from Hindu Theosophy, not from Hegel’s absolute 
or Bergson’s creative vitalism, then the Bible as the 
only rule and guide of faith and practise must be set 
forth as the foundational ground. 

The necessity for instruction must be plain. To 
minimize the intellectual content of Christianity is to 
disparage God; to exalt the emotionalisms of Christianity 
at the expense of its truth content is no tribute to either 
mind or faith. People often unite with the churches be- 
cause of emotional pressure, because of legalistic broad- 
sides, because of mere notion or preference in their 
choices, because their kith and kin go here and not there. 
The Kingdom is important, truth is important, faith is 
important, and there is no need to prostitute mentality 
by waiving its claims when knowledge is the first and 
foremost element in the faith process, even though un- 


THE ADULT CATECHETICAL CLASS 125 


qualified trust in the Saviour is the consummating step. 
A man may prefer the Times to the Tribune, an Under- 
wood typewriter to a Remington, he may even wear a 
four-in-hand tie simply because it happens to be the 
transient, prevailing fashion, but it seems foolish that 
uniting with the Church of Christ for soul-welfare here 
and soul-salvation hereafter should stand akin to mere 
preferences in earthly disputations. When the truth of 
the Scripture and the solidity of the Kingdom have been 
leveled to such a low plane as this, the Kingdom is in a 
sorry plight. For the church of a man’s choice should 
be the church of a real saving Gospel; that is the pur- 
pose of his union with it, and there can be no point in 
uniting where it is not found. The greatest outstanding 
facts in life are sin and righteousness, and the point in 
man’s union with the Church is to secure the correct 
relation to each. The Gospel is the only cure for souls 
and that Gospel, with all its foundations and points per- 
taining to its outreach, certainly should be explained. 

No man would unite with an earthly organization with- 
out instruction in its merits or particulars; the prospect 
desires it and the organization sees to it because it could 
not live otherwise. When the man of the ministry is 
solicited to unite with any of the civic clubs found in our 
cities, the purpose and the particulars of the organiza- 
tion are carefully explained to him in connection with 
the solicitation. And yet, in only too many cases the 
Church fails to instruct her prospective members in the 
real and only truth in and behind the universe, the truth 
which created by divine fiat, supports by providential 
omnipotence, and saves by God’s mercy. 


126 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


THE CLass IN SEMINAR SESSION 


The best method of adult instruction in the catechism 
is for the class to sit in seminar session. By this we mean 
that the catechumens sit in open forum, the pastor going 
through the catechism, with each individual holding his 
book open in his hand. This method leaves ample op- 
portunity for questions as the explanations proceed. The 
seminar session gives opportunity for discussions as well 
as questions and these are valuable; the questions and 
discussions will bring out far more truth, and will lodge 
that truth into the minds of those present far more per- 
manently, than any straight lecture system. The class 
will be interested because it will be interesting. They 
will feel the more interested because they are not merely 
talked at or to; because of their liberty to question and 
to discuss they will consider themselves a part of the 
proceeding. If the pastor as a lecturer does not wish 
to be interrupted or disturbed in the course of his ex- 
planation for that evening, he should conduct a question 
box with the series that written questions may be an- 
swered or should allow room for verbal questions after- 
wards. The seminar session with its questions by the 
people and consequent discussion as a sort of open 
forum, is the best method. 


MIDWEEK OR SUNDAY EVENING LECTURES 


There are times and occasions when the preliminary 
work for such a class cannot be done, or when it is dif- 
ficult to find an evening when all may be present for a 
full course of such seminar sessions. In lieu of the 
meeting it is possible to give a public course of lectures 
on Sunday evenings or mid-week services. Dr. S. P. 


THECADULTIYCATECHEDICALHCEASS 127 


Long’s little work “The Way Made Plain,” is a classic 
on the lectures to be delivered at such services. A ques- 
tion box may be conducted along with such services, and 
at midweek services a blackboard might be used to good 
advantage. Dr. Long has preached a series of sermons 
at Sunday morning services on such a course of instruc- 
tion, with the stipulation that all prospective members 
shall attend these services to prepare themselves for 
confirmation. Such a course has the advantage of educat- 
ing the older members of the congregation along with 
the prospective members, and establishing them the bet- 
ter in the truth. Most of our members need it. It has 
the disadvantage of lacking the open forum free ques- 
tions, answers, and discussions of the seminar session. 
But it is excellent and serves to good purpose. 


CHAPTER IX 
THE REGULAR PREACHING 


The regular Sunday preaching may have much to do 
with the winning of souls and exercise much influence 
on the missionating tendency of the members. The law 
of God must be preached emphatically as it deals with 
sin, and the grace of Christ Jesus through His pro- 
pitiation for that sin must be preached emphatically like- 
wise. Missionary zeal shall be inculcated and the priv- 
ileges and responsibilities of the priesthood of all be- 
lievers expounded. Sin and grace, law and Gospel, these 
shall be the watchwords of the pulpit for they either lead 
to or center in the Saviour. The question as to what a 
man shall preach is answered in the Scripture. He shall 
preach Christ crucified for our sin, raised again for our 
justification. The true exponent of the word “evangelizo” 
will have his course outlined for himself through the 
commands of Him whose ambassador he 1s. 


“ExtTrRA EccLtestAM NuLLA SALUS” 

The Roman Church holds to a doctrine which is 
known by its Latin original: “Extra Ecclesiam nulla 
Salus.” Translated it means: “Outside the Church there 
is no salvation.” The Roman Church vitiates the truth 
inherent in the phrase by maintaining that she herself 
is the and the only Church; in her teachings there is no 
other. The other organizations going under the name of 
churches are not churches at all. It may be seen readily 
that as Rome holds to the doctrine the word “the” re- 

128 


THE REGULAR PREACHING 129 


ceives all the emphasis: “Outside THE Church there is 
no salvation.” Naturally no evangelical will agree with 
the statement as Rome holds it, for to him Rome is not 
part GHUR CEH 

But taken in its evangelical and Scriptural sense there 
is a truth in the statement which cannot be denied. In 
the Old Testament theocracy the stranger had to enter 
into covenant with God through the regular channels of 
the covenant; religiously he had to become a Jew before 
he was considered a chosen son to stand on a par with 
the chosen people. The first thing was the exercise of 
the sign of the covenant upon him to show that he had 
cast in his lot as a believer in and follower of Jehovah, 
the only true God. In the Old Testament regime God 
founded but one thing, and that one thing was the Old 
Testament church. History and prophecy, patriarchs, 
kings and seers, were instruments in God’s hand to es- 
tablish and maintain that one organization. The entire 
Jewish nation with) all its history, secular and religious, 
was established and nurtured for the fulfillment of the 
promises made to the patriarchs. The seed of the woman 
who should crush the serpent’s head, the descendant of 
Abraham through whom all the nations of the earth 
should be blessed, the Melchizedek whose priesthood 
should be eternal, the Shiloh who should appear before 
the scepter departed from Judah and before a law-giver 
ceased to stand between the feet of Jacob’s son, the 
prophet like unto Moses, the branch of righteousness and 
the stem or root of Jesse—all these formed the core and 
kernel of the Hebrew system. The chosen people were 
chosen and kept apart to keep the religion of Jehovah 
pure, and through that faith to bring the great redeemer 


130 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


into the world. The purposes of God centered in Him. 
And in order to secure the benefits His future coming 
would produce, the stranger had to become a covenanted 
son, to submit to the sign of the covenant and to believe 
in Jehovah as a Jew, that he might sacrifice the passover, 
feast of atonement and other festivals, and that the bless- 
ings of God through the high-priest might be his. 

Nor do we find the procedure changed when we come 
to the New Testament. The Messiah, for whose advent 
the entire theocracy with all its detailed institutions was 
established, created and endorsed ordinances of the new 
church which were binding upon all men. He took the 
place of all the Old Testament sacrifices in that He en- 
tered once for all into the holy place, not without blood 
or with the blood of goats and calves but with His own; 
without the shedding of blood there was no remission 
of sins and He shed His blood as the one great, per- 
fect, all-sufficing sacrifice that the sins of men might 
be forgiven. He came, not to destroy or abrogate the 
essential law but to fulfill it; He came to change the 
legality of the old system into the free grace which was 
to be given the world through the preaching of His name. 
The crucified, risen, ascended Christ was the end and 
purpose of the Old Testament ceremonial and sacrificial 
system. 

But the Church as an institution was not abrogated 
though its means and methods were. The New Testa- 
ment Church was built upon prophets and apostles with 
Christ as the chief cornerstone. It was established upon 
the foundation of Him to whom all the Old Testament 
prophecies and sacrifices looked and from Whom they 
received their forgiving value. The Lamb of God slain 


THE REGULAR PREACHING 131 


from the foundation of the world in the mind and pur- 
pose of God, foreshadowed and symbolized through cen- 
turies of preparational steps, had come to actual, sac- 
rificial fulfillment. Salvation through Him and in His 
name was to be preached to the uttermost parts of the 
earth; since the real Saviour had come the Gentile was 
admitted likewise, not by the weak and beggarly elements, 
but by faith in Him and by the ordinances He estab- 
lished for the forgiveness of sins, centered in the one 
complete sacrifice given once for all men for all time to 
come; and the preaching of the completed Word, the 
preaching of Christ crucified, was an added means of 
grace to the sin-sick soul. The ground or basis had 
shifted forward from the Old Testament foreshadow- 
ings and promises to the actual fulfillment in Christ 
Jesus; the means and method had changed through that 
sacrifice to center in that larger fulfillment and fuller 
revelation; but the Church still stood as God’s one and 
only divinely established institution on earth, the re- 
cipient of God’s oracles, the steward of the greater 
mysteries of Christ, the dispenser of God’s grace, the 
possessor of God’s means of caring for the incubus of 
sin. 

The Church must be upheld. In all the Scripture there 
is no indication anywhere that there is salvation out- 
side of it. God may have means of His own of which 
man knows nothing to save those whom man fails to 
reach; but man is bound by the means God has given, 
and the Church was established for the salvation of the 
soul. It is the only institution that ever was established 
for such a purpose. ‘There is no institution to which 
God’s revelation was given, through which God’s real 


132 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


Gospel is preached, for only in the Gospel of the true 
Church does this cry emanate: “Be ye reconciled to God.” 
Sin and salvation are taught through the Church alone; 
baptism and the broken body and shed blood of our 
Lord are administered through the Church alone, nor 
would any other institution ever dare to blaspheme the 
Almighty by audaciously presuming to do it. No man 
has any right to add his own speculations and theories 
to the revelation of God and pass this on as holding 
divine sanction, or as standing on a par with what God 
has spoken. If any man or men presume to do this, 
let them label their organization as an ethical culture 
society or what they will. But without a reali Gospel 
and a true Christ, where such Gospel is not rightly 
preached and the ordinances of Christ rightly admin- 
istered, there is no Church. For the Church is the Church 
of the New Testament, built upon the Church of the 
Old Testament as the Church of the Old Testament dealt 
with adumbrations of the Messianic Redeemer. The 
Church of the New Testament is built upon prophets and 
apostles with Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone. The 
expression of our Lord to Simon Peter came upon the 
discerning statement that Jesus was the Christ, the Son 
of God. The Church of today must be the Church of 
the New Testament and there is no Church where there 
is no genuine Christ. 

The Church must stand confessionally on the basis 
that the Word of God is the only rule and guide of faith 
and practise. She has stood on good ground in the 
past and God grant that she may forever stand on that 
foundation. The man who cannot see sin, who cannot 
see the hand of God in history, who cannot see the neces- 


THE REGULAR PREACHING 133 


sary perfection of God, and cannot see the inner nature 
of the relation which must exist between man and God, 
is blind to the finer things pertaining to the essence of 
thé spirit. A German court chaplain was once asked 
to give in a very few words an argument for Chris- 
tianity; he gave this answer: “The Jew.” That brief 
answer has compact force for the unity of the Book 
and the existence of the Church; it also has force for 
the purpose of God in Christ. When God’s word gives 
no warrant for salvation except through the Church, 
when God, in all His compassion for mankind and all 
His work in history, saw fit to establish only one insti- 
tution for the salvation from sin, and gave to that insti- 
tution the entire means to accomplish His end, surely 
the ambassador of God can but follow the leadings of 
his sovereign Lord. The Church must be upheld as God’s 
institution to do the work of God. Man has no war- 
rant for doing anything else, and has no ground for 
his position if he assumes any other stand. 


THE ONE NAME 


The New Testament clinches the revelations of the 
Old Testament by making salvation reside in the one 
great name of Christ. After Peter and John had been 
imprisoned and forbidden to preach salvation in Christ, 
Peter came back against the well-informed leaders of the 
Jewish people with this: “Neither is there salvation in 
any other, for there is none other name under heaven 
given among men whereby we must be saved.” 

The first thing that must stand out in the mind of any 
man who would be an evangelist is the question: “What 
is the Gospel.” The average man of the ministry is 


134 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


likely to smile when it is suggested. It is trite; it is 
old; it has no savor. What is the Gospel? Why, the 
Gospel is the Gospel, of course; everyone knows what 
itis! The thing that was so easy that he smiled proves 
to be quite a proposition when he is called upon to define 
it in plain, popular style for his people or for the man 
in the street; and so easy is it that he cannot define it 
in any terms, off-hand, except in terms of itself. Every 
man should observe his own opportunity and preach his 
own sermon on what the Gospel really is. 

For every man in the ministry must start just where 
Christianity started and where all real Christianity must 
start. He must start with the Gospel. Every man who 
is conversant with church history or with theological 
movements knows that in recent decades the cry arose: 
Back to Christ. But the very mouths from which it came 
have labeled it in the minds of solid men. For the cry, 
Back to Christ, is weak and specious; it means nothing 
at all, likely, except back to the simple life which Jesus 
lived. There is no need to issue the apparently orthodox 
cry, Back to Christ, and then let men debate whether 
it meant the historical Christ or the Jewish Christ, Chan- 
ning’s Christ or the Christ of Renan and Strauss. The 
cry shall be: Back to the Gospel. When that is em- 
phasized the proper Christ is already included. For 
then the first note in the New Testament that strikes 
the human ear is the angel song which floated over 
Judaea’s hills; and behind that the reiterations of the 
prophets back to the blessing of Jacob upon Judah re- 
garding the law and the scepter, back to Moses and the 
prophet like unto himself, back to the covenant with 
Abraham, back to the gates of the garden of Eden. 


THE REGULAR PREACHING Tao 


From many of the messages heard perennially from 
the pulpits of the land there would be absolutely no 
way of judging what the Gospel might be. There is 
never anything said on it. Both law and Gospel are 
left to the itinerant evangelist, and men then wonder 
why the evangelist has power that they do not have! 
For “we wrestle not with flesh and blood but with powers 
and principalities, with the unseen powers of the air.” 
The men of the ministry deal, not with the philosophy 
of history transcending even Hegel, which loves to 
speculate upon the handwriting of Pilate in three lan- 
guages, beholding the meeting and the struggling of the 
culture of three civilizations—Hebrew, Greek, and 
Roman; we deal with the handwriting of ordinances 
which was blotted out and the sacrifice with which the 
blotting was done. We deal with the blood of the cross 
which, with the resurrection and the ascension plus the 
second coming, will complete the taking of captivity 
captive, and the conquering of both death and hell. We 
deal with the love of God in Christ Jesus and the love 
of men for Christ Jesus, the powers that furnish the 
basis of salvation objectively and furnish the subjective 
connection with God within the God-touched soul. These 
are the vital matters with which we deal, and these are 
the comprehensive things of which we speak when we 
talk about going back to the Gospel. For the Gospel 
is the good news, the glad tidings of great joy of sal- 
vation from sin through Christ Jesus. Good news, glad 
tidings, great joy, to all people—the blessing through 
Abraham upon all the nations of the earth brought to 
the final lap of consummation! 

No man can do anything better than to take the 


136 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


angel’s song for his text on Christmas morning when 
he has a crowded church and preach a well thought out 
sermon on the one great question: “What is the Gospel.” 
He will discover that Christmas is an empty byword 
without Good Friday, and Good Friday would be merely 
the day for a rationalist’s martyr saint if it were not 
for Easter. Easter, too, would be unfinished without 
Ascension Day, and Ascension Day binds itself to the 
return with the final resurrection and the judgment. 
This is the cycle of God. The angel hosts were the 
emissaries of God and they bore a heavenly message, not 
an earthly one. The Gospel and salvation are heavenly 
messages. These, with their ramifications, constitute the 
Gospel. They are of God, not man. There is no 
synergism in the Scripture, although there is a great 
deal of it in many pulpits. And the man of the ministry 
must know what the genuine Gospel is before he essays 
to speak glibly about the Gospel, to speak on it, or to 
expound it as the faith of men. Not only must he know 
it; he must believe it. He must believe it firmly if he 
would preach it authoritatively, and if he does not believe 
it he has no license to preach it at all. 

The evangelistic note in our regular Sunday preaching 
will follow logically from a proper knowledge of what 
the Gospel really is and from a deep-seated faith in it. 
If the Gospel is liberation from sin through Christ’s 
atoning redemption, then the world must know it, and 
the faith and conviction of the man will see that that 
portion of the world to which he preaches will hear it. 
Through the Scripture there runs this one figurative 
scarlet thread: “Without the shedding of blood there is 
no remission of sins.” Cain brought the wrong sort of 


THE REGULAR PREACHING 137 


offering because he brought an offering containing no 
blood; in addition to this the lack of sin-consciousness 
reigned in his heart. The approach of man to God 
must carry the recognition of his sinful relation to his 
Maker, and the attitude of the man as a sinful being 
requiring sin-cleansing will bring that man before God 
as a humble penitent. Repentance unto faith will be the 
process in the heart of the man who comes. This faith 
centers in the atoning redemption because sin and atone- 
ment are indissolubly connected; where there is no sin- 
consciousness there is no recognized need of the Saviour’s 
cleansing redemption. There are too many Cains who 
do not recognize that single offering of Christ’s own 
blood, and who come without the proper sin-conscious, 
penitent spirit or attitude. 

It is evident that faith in Christ Jesus as the power 
of God unto salvation must be preached, and unless the 
Christian pulpit shall be faithful to this Scriptural in- 
junction there is absolutely no use to talk further about 
evangelization. The Church is so full of plans, methods, 
programs, “stunts,” schemes and machinery, that the 
real power behind everything Christian is lost or lost 
sight of. The Holy Spirit stands behind it all, and 
really does all that is of major value in the entire pro- 
ceeding. But the Spirit works only where the Gospel 
is given to work with, and the human instrument must 
furnish that Gospel. Ecclesiastical machinery will never 
convert one soul; the Gospel will. 

There is no reason why that one great name should 
not be preached solidly as Simon Peter preached it, 
to the plain effect that there is salvation in none other. 
The world needs to know it. Many people in the churches 


138 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


are Pharisaic in their smug complacency and their self- 
righteousness, and there are visitors and strangers in 
the churches regularly who are not members anywhere. 
Shall they merely hear a discourse? Shall they merely 
hear a sermon? Or shall they not frequently go forth 
pricked to the heart and ask each other or themselves: 
“Men and brethren, what shall we do?’ The people 
of the earth hope to enter God’s heaven, not one of their 
own making, and they must follow the route outlined by 
the Christ. There are no righteous detours or short cuts 
in religion. A man may know all that even a seventy- 
ounce brain might contain or retain, he might be as rich 
as a Wall Street or Detroit Croesus, and yet, with all 
his earthly accomplishments or accumulations, he must 
bow down in humble faith before the saving Christ if 
he would hope to enter God’s heaven. And so far as our 
preaching goes, the point is that he must know it. 

For that statement in Simon Peter’s answer is un- 
equivocal. It is flat and positive. There are no ifs, 
ands, buts, or perhapses in it. The disciples had received 
the outpouring of the Spirit who would call to their 
remembrance all the things that had been taught them 
by the Master during the three years’ discipleship. 
Though they had lived in crestfallen doubt, now they 
knew and understood. ‘Their completed revelation es- 
tablished what He had told them during the previous 
three years. He had explained Himself as and had ap- 
plied to Himself such words as the way, the truth, the 
life, the vine, the door, the shepherd; He had expounded 
Himself as the Messiah and applied to Himself Old 
Testament Messianic prophecies; He had been trans- 
figured in the presence of three of them. Previous to 


THE REGULAR PREACHING 139 


His own teachings the prophesied and prophetic John 
the Baptist had applied the designation: ‘The Lamb of 
God which taketh away the sin of the world.” Every- 
thing harmonized, all events and teachings dovetailed 
together, revelations accumulated from the books of 
Moses to John the Baptist and the day of Pentecost. 
The cumulative revelations centered in that one great 
name; and through their revealed wisdom of the plans 
and purposes of God in Christ, they proclaimed to the 
world salvation in one name only, and that name the 
one great name of the crucified Christ. In that one 
great name they went forth to herald the glad evangel 
which should evangelize the world. There was salvation 
in none other name under heaven. 

The one great name still stands. No other or further 
revelation has been given to shift the basis of salvation 
or to change the method of it. It is re-enforced by the 
affirmation of Paul: “Though we, or an angel from 
heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that we 
have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” 

The weight of centuries stands behind lim who preaches 
that name and salvation through that name just as it 
stood behind Peter and John. He has all the long series 
of accumulated and successive revelations from Moses 
to Pentecost as the apostles had; in addition to that he 
has the warrant of the work done since the days of 
Peter and John. Surely, with the solid backing of the 
promises and their fulfillment as history and the Scrip- 
tures give it, the man of God can stand forth and preach 
that one great name with authority. The rationalizing 
of man may frown upon him, but the rationalizings of 
man have long since been confounded by the humbler 


140 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


things of the earth, even as the rationalizings of 
Nicodemus were laid low by the words of Christ. “There 
is none other name under heaven whereby we must be 
saved.” 
PERICOPES AND SERMON SERIES 

The pericopes or regular series of texts arranged by 
the communions following the Christian year will pro- 
vide many opportunities for solid preaching on the points 
of the Church as God’s lone, divine institution to which 
are entrusted the mysteries of Christ, and the one great 
name with the atonement which that great name carries 
with it. In addition these pericope texts will furnish 
ample opportunity for applications to the unchurched 
that they come into the communion of saints, and to the 
members of the fellowship that they missionate for the 
winning of souls. No matter what series any man uses 
he will find ample occasion to present all these aspects 
of the way of salvation if he bends his mind upon the 
background of texts and the consistency of Scripture. 

But in addition to the regular pericopes the Sunday 
evenings and midweek services lend excellent oppor- 
tunities to preach series of sermons on the Church, on 
human relations and human duties. The Advent and 
Lenten Seasons particularly lend themselves wonder- 
fully to the working out of such series. The catechism 
with its selected parts furnish fine ground and material. 
In such series the pastor may bend himself to the par- 
ticular problems that his own congregation or his com- 
munity present because he can exercise perfect freedom 
in his choices. Those congregations having large evening 
audiences with many visitors and strangers may well 
take advantage of their Sunday evening opportunities. 


THE REGULAR PREACHING 141 


Congregations and communities differ; each has its own 
peculiar conditions to which the man of the ministry 
must adapt himself or of which he must take advantage. 
But no man should fail to work out such series and 
draw all the attention he can by legitimate means to the 
series contemplated or under way. Such series count for 
much and they present excellent opportunities to win 
the unchurched. 
PuLPIT EXCHANGE 

It has long been the custom of some ministers to ex- 
change pulpits for brief periods for special preaching 
or during special seasons. Many men have done this 
during the Lenten Season or during Passion Week; 
others have done it at other periods for a week or two 
weeks of special services every night. Although all of 
this may come within the heading of regular preaching, 
it can easily come under the general heading as the 
preaching of the Gospel for stronger evangelization. 
Such pulpit exchange is a fine thing. 

Every man has his own way of presenting truth, and 
the different ways of presenting truth will appeal to 
people in the congregation; it will drive home that truth 
to degrees and in ways which the local pastor has not 
been able to do. Some men are far better than others 
as continuous preachers. Moreover there are differences 
in gifts. Much of the evangelism of the country has 
weakened the stationed servant of God in that it has 
often inclined him to the notion that he can get an out- 
sider into his church or his community, and frequently 
he has acted on the notion when there was no need. But 
on the other hand there is a justification for such evan- 
gelism which is scriptural, and the differences in gifts 


142 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


which Paul has cited as to the evangelists actually work 
out in human personalities." There is a difference in 
men; this is no less than a psychological and personal 
proposition which is known to every man who knows 
anything of thinking and preaching. 

Moreover, an outsider can be advertised and will prove 
to be an attraction to draw people when the pastor would 
not draw them. There is a truth here somewhat parallel 
to that of the statement of our Lord that no prophet had 
‘honor in his own country. The same local pastor might 
be advertised in the city of the man with whom he ex- 
changes pulpits and draw people there whom the man 
with whom he exchanged never drew. When a man 
confronts new audiences he rises to the occasion; he is 
inspired to do well or to do his best, while in his own 
pulpit he might pursue his own regular accustomed style. 
A series of a week or two requires fresh thought, and 
the man who goes into the pulpit of another, presenting 
the truth in his own way, a way different from that of 
the regular occupant, can attract and hold frequently 
because of that difference. His thought, which is not 
fresh to him, perhaps, is fresh to the people because his 
thought content, his phraseology, and his manner of 
presenting truth, are different from those of the pastor 
of the congregation. Moreover, he can pour himself 
out even though he exhaust himself, because he is not 
confronting those people regularly Sunday after Sunday. 





All of these New Testament passages bearing on the subject 
—Eph. 4:11, I Cor. 12: 8-10, and Rom. 12: 6-8, deal with these 
differences in gifts, not with gradations of office. The only 
justification in the New Testament for the special evangelist is 
the gift which God gave, not which man created. 


CHAPTER X 
EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 


In the opening chapter of this work, given to the 
definition of the Greek word “evangelizo,” the statement 
was made that as soon as the words “evangelism” and 
“evangelist” are mentioned the minds of the majority 
of people turn to the professional itinerant and the 
revival. The explanation for this was given: Current 
methods long employed tend to imprint certain meanings 
upon certain words, or even to galvanize meaning and 
method upon the word to the result that people take it 
for granted such words cannot have any other meaning. 
The fact was pointed out, too, that revivalism was only 
one method of evangelism, even though that one method 
distorted the meaning of the original word by making 
a part usurp the place of the whole, and was a misnomer 
because it changed also the meaning of the word that 
designated that one part. However, this method of 
evangelism requires consideration. 


CuRRENT AMERICAN EVANGELISM 
Mass evangelism has characterized America for more 
than a century. It originated with the Wesleys in Eng- 
land, spread over the British Isles and was brought to 
America. It has been used by various denominations 
and the method has produced some notable evangelists. 
It has grown to such proportions that the huge tabernacle 
143 


144 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


has been a stipulation in many cases to house the at- 
tending crowds, and thousands have been numbered as 
converts in comparatively short periods of time. As a 
method of mass evangelism it has been a success so far 
as numbers of converts are concerned, even granting 
that artificialities have crept in which would tend to pad 
its statistics.’ 

However, despite the number of converts secured by 
this method of mass evangelism, it has laid itself open 
to criticism. Much of the tent or tabernacle evangelism has 
become sensational and spectacular; it has also become 
irresponsible and commercialized. It has been prosecuted 
by unofficial, free lance evangelists who have evangelized 
according to their own notions and methods, and such 
free lance work has tended to make it a business instead 
of a department of church work under the authority of 
religious bodies. In this way it has been governed by. 
emphasized or exaggerated individualism instead of 
sanely ordered principles, and the defence of its success 
has been akin to the old Jesuitic plea that the end justifies 
the means. The tents and tabernacles have been neces- 
sary to house the huge crowds that attend, which could 
never be assembled in a church building with limited 
seating capacity; but that very feature of it raises the 
unofficial evangelist above the denominational evangelism 
as the evangelist desires, of which he frequently boasts, 
and tends to make him intolerant of restrictions and 
guiding authority. He lays down the law to others, ac- 
cepts none for himself; he is a law unto himself and 
knows no law of any kind except that which he sets for 





1On this see Section 2 of Chapter V. 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 145 


himself. The enforced unionizing of the movement to 
embrace a goodly portion of all the Protestant churches 
in the cities visited, has made intolerant, arbitrary popes 
of some evangelists, and has made their movements 
super-church instead of inter-church. 

The effect upon the people who attend presents a com- 
plex worthy of the study of a Freud. The disparaging 
upbraidings some evangelists have had the audacity to 
administer to the humble, hard-working clergy who do 
the greatest share of the Kingdom’s work lingers in the 
minds of many people, and such people enthrone the 
evangelist as the real saviour of the race and the Church 
with her plainer ministry is adjudged a poor institution 
for soul-saving. Terrific castigations are given the 
churches; they are told that if they did their duty the 
evangelist would not have to come at all, and this in the 
face of the fact that if the men of the churches did not 
underwrite the revival financially, if the churches did not 
close, did not arrange cottage prayer-meetings long in 
advance and work up tremendous enthusiasm, the move- 
ment would not secure the heavy sweep that it enjoys. 
On the one hand many people will attend a tabernacle 
meeting who would never go near a church door; and 
many of these same people are unable to endure the 
reaction that follows. To the churches they may go, but 
the services there, without the tremendous pitch of en- 
thusiasm, minus the excitement and the huge crowds, 
seem tame, flat, and worthless. It is difficult for such a 
convert to reconcile himself to the difference. 

This same reaction works upon the people who are 
already members of the Church. Every man in the 
ministry knows that the Sundays after Christmas and 


i , jf 
’ 
i 


146 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


Easter show a very poor attendance. It is the reaction 
after the good attendances, the attractions, and the added 
efforts of the previous seasons. After the tent has left 
the town, the churches are exhausted, the excitement has 
subsided, the high tension of nervous force lets down, 
and the reaction might be likened to the after-effects of 
a devastating wind. The substantial people of the flocks 
work as hard afterward to follow up and gain the fruit- 
age of the revival as they did when it was in progress; 
but those of lighter mind or purpose carry their re- 
ligious minds in the weeks that passed instead of the 
present or the future. The let-down and the backward 
look are corollary. The less substantial breathe again. 

So far as the revivalism within the churches is con- 
cerned some of these criticisms do not apply. He who 
would disagree with this method of mass evangelism 
inside the walls of the congregational homes must dis- 
agree in principle. Evangelism within the church build- 
ing does not usually run to such extremes as does that 
of the tent or the tabernacle. It is not likely to ad- 
minister disparaging beratings to any local pastor; 
such language as is frequently heard in tent or taber- 
nacle is not likely to be heard within the church, nor are 
the antics and wild furore of the public stage likely to 
appear. Again the evangelist cannot set himself up as 
a pope of super-church authority, issuing arbitrary com- 
mands to this and that and the other. In such cases 
the evangelist is likely to be a recognized man of the 
denomination, a man recognized within the denomination 
as a man of standing, reliable and worthy of the work 
entrusted to him. Nor can he close the other churches; 
there is no super-church authority attempted to enforce 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 147 


unionism. The entire project may be based upon solider 
foundations and be conducted more sanely without the 
wild extravagances and artificialities so common to the 
other kind. People who habitually steer clear of a 
church door will not attend when they might attend a 
tabernacle meeting; but those converted within the 
church are the more likely to remain solid members of 
it because their conversion has taken place inside its 
walls. 

But even so, such mass evangelism is open to criticism 
on other ground. It runs to hyper-emotionalism; high 
pressure and heavy play on the emotions are necessary 
for the conversion of masses of people, and it is but 
natural that the evangelist and all workers should press 
this to the utmost. Mass evangelism depends entirely 
on emotional pressure and the psychology of the crowd. 
He who converts none is not considered an evangelist 
at all; if he converts but few he is a poor evangelist 
or the revival was not a great success. Consequently 
numbers must be secured for the sake of the project 
locally, and also for the sake of the man who does the 
work. The members of the local congregation strive 
for numbers and the evangelist for the sake of his 
reputation as an evangelist, if for no higher reasons, must 
do likewise. Everything gives way to the securing of 
numbers; the high pressure and heavy play upon the 
emotions is the means to secure this end. Arrtificialities 
creep in here also; people are coached in advance to re- 
spond in order that there shall be a break in the right 
direction, and personal workers go through the audience 
adding their own urgings and pleadings to the pleadings 
of the evangelist. The music, too, must be of the spe- 


148 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


cial sort which re-enforces the pleadings of evangelist and 
workers; without music of this kind the play upon the 
emotions would be rendered far less effective, shall we 
say almost impossible. Everything is centered upon this 
play upon the emotions, and the heavier the play or the 
pressure, the better the results secured. So patent has 
this stress of the emotions become that psychologists 
and sociologists have studied the revival as a phenomenon, 
and Davenport has named his study: “Primitive Traits in 
Religious Revivals.” 

The mind of man cannot be separated into compart- 
ments or departments, for under normal conditions the 
whole consciousness usually acts upon important mat- 
ters that come within its range. But functionally on 
the basis of these actions or reactions the mind can be 
divided. The dominant functions of the consciousness 
are intellectual, emotional, and volitional; the mind is 
far more of a unity than the old psychologists taught, 
yet their divisions, applied to the work of consciousness, 
were not so far wrong. As concerns the subject under 
discussion, religion must appeal to all three functions of 
mind, and to do this the presentations of it must con- 
tain objectively the elements to appeal to these three 
divisions subjectively. Religion is not philosophy, hav- 
ing intellectual content only; but at the same time any 
religious system must contain a strong intellectual con- 
tent of truth if it would appeal to the thinking listener. 
Religion is not a hard, unfeeling thing; its elements and 
characteristics embody the finest of sentiments, the most 
delicate of feelings, the most powerful of emotions, and 
these must be presented in order that they may become a 
part of the individual Christian and may work them- 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 149 


selves out in his life. Religion is not a matter of hard, 
unbending will alone; but the faithfulness required in 
a steward, the steadfastness in the faith so necessary to 
the Christian, and the power to avoid the pitfalls and 
temptations of life certainly require a strong exercise of 
will. In itself religion must be sensible, sane, rational 
and well-balanced if it would produce a well-balanced, 
sane, sensible, rational human faith and life, and logically 
enough, the presentation of it must be the same. 

It must be evident that such a one-sided or unbalanced 
stress upon the emotions alone is not a correct presenta- 
tion of Christianity for Christianity is neither one-sided 
nor unbalanced. Moreover, the end does not justify the 
means. The psychology of the crowd is such that men’s 
minds do not function normally when their individual 
minds are submerged in the mind of the crowd.’ ~ It is 
scarcely worthy of the nobility of Christianity to resort 
to such heavy pressure on the feelings alone or to make 
itself so one-sided in its appeal; Christianity cheapens 
itself when it resorts to such measures for propagation. 
In the long run it loses in respect what it gains in num- 
bers, and ennobled influence is sacrificed to accessions. 
The world, whose worldlings are the very ones whose 
respect for the Church should be enforced by the inherent 
worth of the Church in character, essence, and method, 
cries out with some justification: “If that is religion or 
the way the churches work, none of it for me.” In such 
minds the excesses have militated to the derision of 
religion. 

The high pressure emotionalism also distorts the re- 





*See Le Bon, “The Crowd”; Ross, “Social Psychology”; Mc- 
Dougall, “Introduction to Social Psychology.” 


150 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


ligious vision of many people within the churches. They 
are thrown out of balance, their equilibrium is lost. In 
some it produces that peculiar attitude of mind which 
loves to feast upon or to become intoxicated by the ex- 
cesses of its own hyper-emotionalism. The catastrophic 
experience inclines many others to believe that everyone 
must pass through the same experience and if he does not 
he is no Christian. Such an attitude can easily become 
tinctured with the holier-than-thou sentiment forbidden 
by Scripture. There are men in the ministry who con- 
sider themselves faithful workers for and with God 
who have been met with the astounded exclamation: 
“You a preacher, and you’ve never been converted?” Nor 
do explanations suffice; the man is charged with not 
believing in conversion! Worse still, there are men in 
the ministry whose ardent revivalistic tendencies have so 
overbalanced them that they, too, can conceive of no 
real, vital faith which has not passed through this catas- 
trophic, experiental process; and so obsessed have they 
become with this idea that they have bent themselves 
with all their energy to proselytizing the followers of 
such communions as have a different idea of conversion 
whom they could reach by emotionalistic pressure.’ Those 
thus converted have “found their Saviour”; evidently 
they never knew of one previously though they were 
reared in the church by godly parents. 

The tendency toward the emotional pressure or the 
exaltation of the emotional exercises much influence on 





* The writer actually heard the above sentiment expressed by a 
man who is considered quite a theologian in his locality; and 
in a book from his pen the above conviction is implied plainly, 
though he does not name the denomination he condemns and 
proselytes. 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 151 


the worship or the service of the congregation. No con- 
gregation can maintain the tense fervor of the revival. 
Even iron cannot be maintained at white heat; it burns 
itself brittle and gradually melts away. But there must 
be consistency in all things. To step from calm methods 
of worship or service into the tabernacle is a contrast; 
no less a contrast is it to step from the tabernacle back 
into well-ordered, solemn worship. The evangelist is a 
specialist; he would not be brought in at all if he were 
not considered such. His method savors nothing at all 
of solemnity of worship; his method must needs center 
itself upon the emotional nature and such a method 
brings in things and attitudes that are sadly at variance 
with solemn worship. Solemnity of worship is just pre- 
cisely what he dare not have. The people attending the 
meetings are imbued with the trend of those meetings; 
they have been impressed with what this method has ac- 
complished, and they are of the bent of mind that the 
worship and services of their congregation must be 
the same as that of the meetings. In the endeavor to 
make or keep the atmosphere of the congregation to 
something approaching or at least savoring of the former 
heat, the revivalistic hymnbook is put into the church 
and into the Sunday school. In aping the method of 
the tabernacle the choirister must needs imbue the 
audience with enthusiasm, or with what is so commonly 
designated as “pep.” This ‘‘pep” is as vastly different 
from tense religious fervor as its miserable, slangy name 
differs from serious conversion. At its best it is merely 
a low grade enthusiasm, usually inspired by humor and 
sometimes with comic display. Everything must be dosed 
generously with some sort of religious tabasco sauce; 


152 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


everything must be spicy and full of ecclesiastical ginger. 
The solemnity of solid worship is destroyed. The dignity: 
of the house of God is either forgotten or never recog- 
nized at all. The Scriptural injunction: “The Lord is 
in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before 
him,” is largely stricken from the consciousness. The 
human far overshadows the divine. The worship of such 
churches becomes a sort of fussy program instead of a 
solemn religious exercise. Into a Roman Catholic 
Church one may go, feel the presence of God, know 
that he is in church, and can worship despite the absence 
of preaching and the unknown tongue in the elaborate 
rituals; the solemnity of the house of God is there and 
the whole attitude of the people is the attitude of wor- 
ship. The atmosphere is the atmosphere of worship of 
God. But when one goes into a revival meeting or into 
the churches where a human program or fussy subjec- 
tiveness holds sway, he discovers a different atmosphere. 
He who cavils at these criticisms has but to attend the 
two on successive Sundays to observe the contrast. 
Finally no worship of God can be enthusiastic. Wor- 
ship should be heartfelt, warm, willing, fervent, but it 
cannot partake of enthusiasm. Worship cannot be 
hilarious, exuberant or excited. Earnest it should be but 
earnestness in worship cannot be the lively expression 
of outward feelings tending anywhere toward exuber- 
ance, ecstacy, or excitement. Earnestness in worship can 
well express strong feelings, powerful emotions; nor- 
mally the attitude of genuine worship would be calm and 
subdued, but if it does express strong feelings those 
feelings would be in the direction precisely opposite to 
liveliness, enthusiasm, or manifestation of excited in- 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 153 


terest. The word “enthusiasm” cannot be coupled with 
normal worship or with the attitude of normal worship 
for the reason that worship deals with the inner attitude 
of the soul toward God, with the relationship fhat must 
exist between the soul and God, and such a relation can- 
not be enthusiastic. A “meeting” may be enthusiastic 
but worship cannot; true worship of God must ever be 
characterized by sanity and sobriety. One of the fruits 
of the spirit as recorded in Gal. 5:22 is joy, the soul 
of the worshiper should be joyful and buoyant in its 
faith; but the buoyancy of faith is a sign of strength 
nor is it inconsistent with sanity and sobriety. The gen- 
uine joy of faith is not an excited ecstacy which easily 
leads to what the Germans call “Schwaermeret.” 

At the best enthusiasm may be a strong excitement 
of feeling or a lively manifestation of interest. It is in 
these senses of the word that it is usually used with 
reference to religious worship. But such words are 
often overworked or wrongly applied; a study of the 
worship of God as betokened in the Scriptures, even at 
highest tensity, plus deep reflection on the inner essence 
of worship, will show that earnestness, fervor, fervency, 
or some characteristic of a heart-felt attitude rather than 
of mental excitement had better be the character of 
worship or of service in the temple, because they come 
nearer to the true inner relation which must exist be- 
tween man and God; while the attitude of enthusiasm 
had better be left for application to discussion, plans and 
work. 

The heavy emotional pressure exerted in the revival 
may often affect the minister and his preaching; the 


154 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


preaching becomes one-sided. This may be the case 
with men wherein the revivalistic idea does not enter at 
all; but in only too many cases the campaigns do pro- 
duce it. The people and the new converts are ac- 
customed to the broadsides and stirring condemnation 
just heard. The pastor may be influenced by the attitude 
of the people. The edification of saints is forgotten in 
the cudgeling of sinners and a sermon for the instruc- 
tion of both is considered tame, flat, and empty. To 
take care of this attitude the pastor must become a 
miniature evangelist. Or he may have his own desire 
to emulate the great man in order to hold the esteem of 
the people lest he suffer by comparison, and be consid- 
ered tame, flat and empty. The preaching becomes an 
incessant, flaming broadside against sin and sinners. The 
law overshadows the Gospel; edification and instruction 
in sermons are submerged by unceasing bombardment. 
As a matter of fact after such a revivalistic campaign 
the pulpit work should take on the didactic character 
of instructing people in the religion they have espoused ; 
but frequently the attitudes of both pastor and people 
are such that the instruction is not given because it will 
not be received as it should be received. The temper 
of mind is against it. All the people who sit in the pews 
at any time are not faultless saints, and moreover, there 
are shades and growths in the sanctification process. But 
the pulpit Boanerges is one-sided; no man can be an 
Elijah or John the Baptist all the time. There are 
times when fire must be called down from heaven, for 
both the unchurched and those who have long ago cast 
in their lot with the Lord require law; but the cloven 
tongues of Pentecost were the kindling of knowledge, 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 155 


faith and zeal, they were not the actual flames of fiery 
destruction. 

There is an immense amount of clear thinking required 
on this whole question of evangelism. We have all sorts 
of religious tendencies in the many denominations of the 
United States. The Roman Catholic Church does not 
officially encourage any such emotionalistic tendencies 


or revivalistic programs. Theirs is the educational, the | 
catechetical method, the fulfillment of the command of : 
God to Moses and the Jewish people as expounded in | 


a previous chapter. At the same time to a large degree 
the intellectual element is denied the people; like the 
charge of the soldiers killed at Balaklava — “theirs 
not to reason why.’ The church speaks and _ the 
people obey. The people are steeped into the teachings 
of the holy church, literally saturated with them; the 
children are taken to the church regularly from earliest 
age; and Roman Catholics are the most ardent and loyal 
of any communion in the United States. On the other 
hand we have the devotees of holiness sects whose tenets 
of religion are so crude that they actually have sung, 
“There are no flies on Jesus.”’ And we find all sorts and 
shades and grades and descriptions between these two 
extremes! We find that Ritschlian theology pervades 
all corners though the men holding to the theology may 
not know they are holding it and might not know its 
origin even if they knew they held it; to those who do 
know it the authority of the mighty Ritschl backed by 
Schleiermacher stands behind the emotionalists with a 
doctrinal system to support their claims. Inasmuch 
as many people do no great amount of thinking, the 
emphasized religious feelings can easily fill out the ex- 


156 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


periential, subjective theology of Ritschl as over against 
the objectivity of Scripture. In the minds of many 
people religion descends to the level of feelings alone. 
Others are rationalistic to the core. Some men in the 
evangelical churches are cold intellectuals; their sermons 
are logical, orthodox according to established standards, 
homiletically correct, well-reasoned and solid; their tem- 
peraments are stoical and stolid, matter-of-fact and 
prosaic. Other men incline much to the emotional trend ; 
they love to become what is termed “well-drillers drilling 
for tears” and their often sickly illustrations are of this 
cast. Men frequently find favor with many people by 
this means for there are not a few who judge the effec- 
tiveness of a sermon by the fluttering of handkerchiefs 
like a Chautauqua salute. 

In the light of these personal equations in ministry 
and laity, of these temperamental differences in indi- 
viduals, congregations and whole denominations, and of 
the differing tendencies and policies they produce, clear 
thinking is the more necessary. Above all things, there 
shall be no violent prejudice in the thinking. He who 
is a cold intellectualist or a thorough conservative will 
shout a fervid “Amen” to the criticism against current 
American evangelism as it has been given herein, and 
with the same breath may say that it was not half strong 
enough. He who is a dyed-in-the-wool revivalist will 
condemn the analysis as shallow, one-sided, prejudiced and 
unfair. Let no man criticise the mass evangelism of 
this country as it has been practised simply because it 
has not been his method; nor again let no man criticise 
the catechetical method simply because to his mind it 
involves no deeply emotional religious experience. No 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 157 


man has the right to attempt to laugh the method of 
the other out of court unless he is willing to allow his 
own to be laughed out of court. Each has a like jus- 
tification for resentment if the other simply laughs at 
the method opposed. No method can be condemned on 
the basis of a mere personal equation nor can another 
be approved on the basis of a mere personal prejudice; 
both must be analyzed with clear insight, and both min- 
isters and denominations must follow whatever method 
they follow on the basis of solid conviction. 

The great trouble in the past has been that exponents 
of opposing methods have been unwilling to see or to 
recognize the values in the other. The exponents of the 
catechetical method have been afraid of the term “re- 
ligious experience’ and have been unwilling to grant any 
serious consideration to its validity. Let no man forget 
that great numbers of those brought into the church 
through the strenuous tension of the revivalistic method 
do have a religious experience, and that that religious 
experience is vital to them. On the other hand the ex- 
ponents of the emotional system have held catechetical 
instruction and confirmation in contempt, though some 
men have used it in places of Lutheran population as 
a blind to cover proselytizing purposes; and in many 
counties the Sunday School Associations have issued 
questionnaires on Sunday school work with a query on 
Decision Day with the appended remark in fine print 
within parentheses: (Or by confirmation in lieu of Deci- 
sion Day). The revivalistic people will have to recognize 
the superhuman power of God in regeneration, the divine 
re-birth by the incorruptible seed of the Word of God 
as having far greater power and value than human 


158 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


emotions, and consequently will have to emphasize the 
divine work much more than the human effort or ex- 
perience.. They must recognize the slow process of 
the Spirit working in a human soul unfelt and un- 
recognized by the individal who goes through the pro- 
cess unknown to himself; while the unemotional, in- 
tellectually inclined will have to recognize that the Word 
of God can rend the soul of the sinner suddenly to his 
own anguish of heart, and can bring him to his knees 
with a cry of sinfulness as Peter was brought down in 
the boat on Galilee. All will have to recognize that faith 
is the gift of God, and that sinful man can do nothing 
without the Christ. The cold intellectualist or the stolid 
stoic must put more feeling into his sermons, and the 
trembling emotionalist will have to reverse the process. 
All shall recognize that we grow in grace as we grow 
in the knowledge of God, but that knowledge comes only 
by instruction. 

The emotionalistic evangelism and the emphasis on the 
subjective has done one thing for its people that a more 
prosaic policy has not accomplished. It makes active 
evangelists to convert others. The people themselves are 
“converted,” they re-consecrate themselves in other ser- 
vices; they are taught that the world must be converted 
if it would be saved and naturally they interpret that 
conversion to mean the same process of conversion 
through which they themselves have passed. They in- 
terpret it in terms of their own high tension religious 
experience. They are urged to bring in others that these 
may be converted also. Their lack of balance frequently 





*See Jacobs, “Summary of the Christian Faith,’ Chapter XXI. 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 159 


tends them to proselytizing if they cannot recognize 
faith in any other forms or terms than their own. They 
frequently relate that they “‘agonize in prayer.” Their 
faith tends to burn with more visible fire. The emo- 
tionalism of their sum total church life is a feeling of 
higher tension than that of the more prosaic and it tends 
to produce a spirit or attitude of religious strenuosity. 
Emotion usually manifests itself in activity, and when 
it does that activity is more tense and strenuous; what- 
ever such people do they do with great enthusiasm and 
with all their energy. 

On the other hand prosaic minds are not as likely to 
be so active or so easily brought into activity; and when 
they are active they are not so excitedly enthusiastic in 
action. Being more matter-of-fact they treat their work 
as they do their worship in a more stolid manner; they 
treat their own religion and the religion of others in their 
natural matter-of-fact way. Their church worship, their 
church service, their whole church life is not featured 
by the emotionalism which leads to high tension; the 
subjective feelings are not emphasized or played upon 
so much as are those of more subjective denominations. 
The objective facts of Scripture and of religious life 
receive the greater emphasis. This balance of the 
objective and the subjective creates the poise of a full 
Gospel mentioned in a previous chapter, but it does not 
create the same enthusiasm or strenuous zeal produced 
by the faith which burns with such visible fire as does 
that of the more emotionalistic Christians. Emotionalistic 
experiences, emotionalistic training, emotionalistic sur- 
roundings, are bound in the very nature of things, to 
create a more enthusiastic activity than the activity of 


169 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


those whose entire church life is featured by more 
prosaic elements. We frequently hear men belonging 
to the more stolid denominations question whether the 
people of the more subjective denominations do not have 
something that their own people do not have. This is 
one of those things. 

The churches not emphatically of the emotionalistic 
type have members whose religious experience is not of 
the outwardly emotionalistic sort. Their faith is more 
calm and subdued and everything will be done in more 
calm and subdued fashion. The different types of re- 
ligious experience and of expression of faith betoken 
a different fiber in the faith. The faith which burns so 
visibly in expression is not necessarily greater than that 
which is more calm and subdued; if anything, the more 
calm and subdued faith is stronger in the long run be- 
cause it is anchored in a solid nature which is not easily 
stampeded and is ballasted by a stabler control. The 
difference in the faith lies in fiber, not in degree; it is a 
difference in quality, not in strength. There is danger 
in both. The danger of the more stolid is that it may 
degenerate into inertness; the danger in the other is 
that it may take flight into mere fussiness, or dissolve 
into mere notional effervescence. The path of church 
history is strewn with the debris and wreckage of dead 
orthodoxy on the one side; on the other with warped 
pietism which ran into mysticism, with fanatical aber- 
rations which have led people astray. They have lost 
the truth of Jesus Christ objectified in Scripture and 
in life; have caused God’s children to lose their sober 
judgment, and have even led supposedly Christian fol- 
lowers from the path of rectitude. It is well for de- 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 161 


nominational leaders to analyze the trends their policies 
of shaping faith may take; and instead of criticising 
each other with carping polemics, to look to their own 
lest their own follow the trails of destruction still plainly 
visible as they were trodden in former days. 

If the sheer emotional religious experience is the dif- 
ference it is not likely that the difference will be mended. 
Faith takes different turns and finds different expres- 
sion in individuals according to individual temperament ; 
there are emotionally inclined people in what are usually 
called the liturgical churches, and there are stolid, prosaic 
people in the churches inclined to doing everything with 
emphasized subjective feelings and enthusiasm. Likewise 
will it take different turns and directions and find differ- 
ing expression in congregations and denominations 
through the sum total of environment, worship, service, 
atmosphere, method, general policy and training. But 
in this matter of evangelism as it is communicated to 
the lay members of the congregations, the missionary 
zeal need not emanate from sheer emotionalism at all. 
Better is it if it emanate from loyalty, conviction, the 
unwavering conviction of solid, persevering faith. 

However, if people are to do the work of God they 
must be directed and guided that their faith may take 
the right turn, no matter what its fiber may be, or what 
may be the temperament of the individuals whose ex- 
pression it is. In unthinking zealots it must be ballasted 
and solidified that it become a true missionary zeal, not 
a fussy activity or freakish fanaticism. In the over- 
stolid and inert it must be aroused. The degree or quan- 
tity of faith is there, though it may not burn with 
much perceptible fire. If the disciples of strenuous 


162 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


enthusiasm will put greater intellectual content or stabler 
poise where that is necessary for proper equilibrium, their 
personal evangelism will gain instead of lose; and if the 
more conservative will analyze the whole consciousness 
of mankind to their perception of the value of emotion 
in religion, and will put more feeling into their sermons 
and their work, their followers will be less prosaic in 
the enterprises of the church, less matter-of-fact, likely 
more zealous, and certainly more active in prosecuting 
the work of the Kingdom. 


THE PAuLIstT FATHERS 


In the Romish Church the Paulist or “Preaching 
Fathers” conduct “missions” in the congregation. The 
front of the church where the mission is conducted bears 
huge muslin signs in strong colors with the inscription 
“Paulist Mission” with the dates it covers. The con- 
gregation is fired long in advance. The newspapers are 
used effectively and wide publicity given the meetings. 
The Paulists are preachers, forceful, popular preach- 
ers, who know the arts of the popular preacher and use 
them to good effect. Their preaching is dignified, sen- 
sible, and sane, despite all its forcefulness. During the 
mission they preach sermons for women only and for 
men only. During the evening preaching services no 
top-heavy liturgies are used; everything is simple and 
plain for the benefit of the general public not accustomed 
to elaborate ceremonials nor understanding the Romish 
liturgy. Hymns are used, printed on small pamphlets, 
and circulated through the pews. Some of the hymn- 
tunes are strikingly like those of the old Seiss’ “Blue- 
book.” The Roman Church is lauded to the skies and 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 163 


the principal doctrines set forth in appealing light. And 
the Paulists do issue stirring appeals to those who are 
not in the fold to come into the church. 

The people of the parish turn out night after night 
as only Catholics can. They are strengthened in their 
Catholic consciousness and are fired with zeal for the 
Holy Church. They are remarkably persistent in their 
efforts to get their neighbors to hear the wonderful 
preaching fathers. Many go. Prejudiced people are 
disarmed of their prejudices and doubtful people are 
warmed in sympathy toward Romanism. ‘The special 
subjects for special evenings are announced in advance 
and people are urged to bring in every possible hearer. 
The unchurched tenth of a divided matrimonial alliance 
is inevitably pushed hard to be there as often as possible. 
The members are urged to make special prayers for the 
unchurched husbands and wives and for all prospective 
members. There are no cottage prayer-meetings in the 
homes—this is not Rome’s method at all; but at the church 
there are special masses and prayers every morning. The 
church building is a perfect beehive of activity; votaries 
are the order of the mission, and the prayer element 
on the part of the people is a large factor in the work. 
There is a tremendous zeal and activity in all members 
of the parish. 

These Paulist fathers preach with all the fire and 
earnestness of a Billy Sunday but with none of the extrav- 
agances. Their manner is well-poised and dignified. The 
doctrines of the church are explained in popular style so 
that everyone may understand. The church is extolled 
in the highest terms. ‘The absolute necessity of active 
membership in the church is emphasized as the and 


164 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


the only means of salvation; “Lwtra Ecclesiam nulla 
Salus” obtains solid exposition. There are no diatribes 
against the evangelical denominations; but the doctrines 
and polity of these are skillfully undermined to create 
doubt in their saving efficacy whereas salvation as 
centered in the Romish Church is expounded as sure 
and certain. The earnest devotees of the evangelical 
denominations are represented as being deluded and mis- 
guided; sincere and earnest enough, no doubt, but walk- 
ing on the thin ice of illusion, they know not where. 
They are subjects for pity and sympathy; the prayer 
and hope are expressed that they may come to see the 
error of their way, see the true light, and come back 
into the fold. The fixed stability of Rome is not dis- 
played as an arbitrary hierarchy but as the divinely ap- 
pointed recipient of Christ’s earthly order of things; 
the pope is not a religious dictator but is Christ’s benef- 
icent, benign, and solicitous vice-gerent on earth. 

Little more need be said about the Paulist Missions. 
Naturally the practise and polity of the church is ex- 
plained in popular style, plainly in detail as are the 
doctrines and foundations. Illustrations in keeping with 
the arts of public oratory are used, and in the mouths 
of such forceful preachers, move the people in accord- 
ance with the rules and psychology of public speaking; 
the illustrations, too, are cleverly selected, largely from 
Catholic sources, undoubtedly calculated to inspire con- 
fidence in the Romish Church. 

The non-Catholics gathered during these missions are 
all piloted into a catechetical class installed by the parish 
priests at the conclusion of the mission. There is a rigid 
course of catechization for every convert; trust Rome 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 165 


for that! The class meets regularly in a body and the 
confirmation service is heralded widely over the parish 
and the city by newspaper publicity, and is attended by 
an immense crowd. One man with whom the writer was 
in constant contact during one of these missions bore the 
name of Adamson—a name certainly not Polish or Irish. 
He landed in “mother church” in a catechetical class 
of one hundred and two! He had been confirmed at a 
Lutheran altar at the age of fourteen, had never at- 
tended his own church thereafter because of language 
and other reasons, and had finally married an ardent 
Irish Catholic wife. The writer’s expositions were of no 
avail. The man was not fully convinced but he had 
been disarmed of his aversions, and there was peace in 
his family. 

The Episcopal Church also conducts missions of like 
character. Of them the writer knows nothing at first 
hand and he cannot speak of their method nor of their 
effectiveness. The Episcopal Church maintains a spirit 
all her own. She has seldom united with the revivalistic 
efforts in American cities. Knowing her spirit we may 
well conjecture that her missions must be conducted in 
a manner rather similar to the method of the Paulist 
fathers. 


LUTHERAN TENDENCIES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS 


In America some congregations of the Scandinavian 
Lutheran Synods have held evangelistic services. These 
services served to deepen the spiritual life of their own 
people tremendously but how many may have been 
brought into the church we cannot say. The services 
were not intended for specific evangelistic purposes and 


166 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


hence may have drawn but few of the unchurched. They 
were in no sense revivalistic and did not savor in the least 
of American revivalism. No wildness, extravagances, 
or lack of dignity ever appeared in the meetings. 

During the autumn season of 1921 the congregations 
of various Lutheran synods in the city of Chicago in- 
augurated an evangelistic campaign to cover a period of 
several weeks. Street preaching was used to some ex- 
tent ; services were held during the week in the churches ; 
the preachers exchanged pulpits. There was nothing 
wild or extravagant in the entire proceeding; it was 
sane and sensible throughout. Various pastors testify 
that it helped their congregations a great deal and that 
it secured accessions. But there are no definite sta- 
tistics available to determine what the movement may 
have produced in point of numbers. 

In the year 1922 the Rev. T. B. Uber, then in Prince- 
ton, Ill., turned special evangelist in his own congrega- 
tion, and held a series of services to cover three succes- 
sive weeks. His sermons for the series are in print, 
published by the Brotherhood Bible Class of the con- 
gregation he served. Though he was not aware of the 
similarity at the time, his mission was quite similar to 
those of the Paulist fathers. Inasmuch as his sermons 
are in print, it is obvious that nothing need be said 
about the content of his messages. As a Lutheran on 
whose nature the word revival grates, his mission was 
sane, sensible and orderly. His appeals to the unchurched 
were not of the character that they then and there should 
find their Saviour, accept Jesus as their personal Saviour, 
or anything of that sort. Huis plea was that those suf- 
ficiently interested to accept the Christian life definitely 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 167 


should enroll in a catechetical class that they might learn 
the fundamentals of the Christian religion as expounded 
by his church. He appealed rather to the intelligence and 
to the will than to the feelings. His mission won one 
hundred and twelve for his adult catechetical class; these 
he instructed in the Lutheran faith before he received 
them into the congregation.” 

Conservative Lutherans in the vicinity labeled the 
mission a “revival.” Whether such active efforts for the 
winning of the unchurched in any community can be 
covered by any such blanket term is questionable. Much 
of the argument in all spheres arises because of lack of 
definition of terms. A parallel is not an identity. Never 
yet has the writer heard that Roman Catholics or 
Episcopalians were conducting a “revival” though he has 
been in close touch with one mission conducted by the 
Paulist fathers, and had that been conducted in his 
church on the fundamentals of his own faith he would 
most willingly attach his imprimatur and sign his “Nzhil 
obstat.’ The method, the nature, the character of the 
whole movement are the criteria by which such move- 
ment shall be judged and no term of such specific con- 
notation can or should be applied to it, unless beyond 
doubt such term covers the case. 

The “week of prayer” observed in many congregations 
of the Augustana Synod is what its names states; it is 
not an evangelistic movement but a week of prayer for 
the deepening of the spiritual life of the congregation. 
The old “Hus verhor’ conducted in the homes in the 
earlier days of the synod were prayer-meetings also, 





*This is not a new method originating through this case. It 
is cited because it is specific and is well known to the writer. 


168 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


but their purpose was to refreshen the memories of the 
people on the catechism and the fundamentals of the 
church. Fundamentally they were meetings for indoc- 
trination. There are older Swedes living who will state 
that they were “converted” in “revivals” of their own 
in their own congregations ; but their meaning is that they 
were deeply touched by the strong emotional element 
in their own prayer-meetings and passed through a 
definite religious experience there. The Norwegian 
Lutheran congregations hold their own services for the 
deepening of the spiritual life but these are not of the 
revivalistic sort among the major portion of Norwegian 
Lutherans in America. These meetings do produce a 
praying laity, and among all Christian people of what- 
ever trend, nowhere can one hear more devout or saner 
praying than is done by these Scandinavian Lutherans. 

Despite the strong emotional natures of some of the 
Scandinavian peoples, and despite the deep spirituality 
some of these prayer meetings have produced tending 
to the development of the emotional nature, the Scan- 
dinavians have never run riot into extravagances nor has 
their Lutheranism ever been allowed to suffer because 
of it. The Germans are a stolid, prosaic people, and 
their church life has seldom varied from that tendency 
in America, though in Germany it has passed through 
periods of pietism. The subjective prayer-meeting has 
never characterized German Lutherans. The Danes have 
been stolid in places and in other places inclined to 
pietism. The Finns are divided into two synods; the 
one conservative in policy and practise, the other given 
to the revivalistic tendency. Taken as a whole, the 
Lutheran Church in America has been conservative; she 


EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISTS 169 


has depended largely upon the catechetical method. The 
catechetical class for the adolescents is found everywhere ; 
and the adult class has grown by leaps and bounds. In 
such centers as Mansfield, Ohio, and Omaha, Neb., with 
many other cities the country over, the work done 
through congregational evangelism with solid co-opera- 
tion of pastor and people, has been remarkable, and has 
shown vital Christianity at its best. Lutheranism has 
run to extremes of subjectivity at some places, and has 
degenerated into dead orthodoxy in others; but taken 
the country over has held conservatively to solid methods 
and has done well with them. And where both pastor 
and people have been active evangelists, where the adult 
catechetical class has had the large place that it properly 
deserves, the growth and the activity of the Lutherar 
Church has equaled the best that Christianity can show. 


CHAPTER AT 
CHURCH PUBLICITY 


The one necessary point in evangelism is to get the 
unchurched and the Word of God together. If Moham- 
med will not come to the mountain the mountain must go 
to Mohammed. Street preaching will have to be used wher- 
ever feasible. But in the Old Testament God directed the 
building of the tabernacle, and the later temple had its 
own subsidiary synagogues for the center of worship in 
the cities and towns. God’s worship must be housed, 
even though God Himself dwelleth in a building not 
made with hands. There is scriptural warrant for the 
brick building on the corner; it is built by divine direc- 
tion for the dispensing of God’s Word. To that local 
temple of God the unchurched must be taught to trace 
their steps. There are those who, of their own will 
refuse the proferred grace of God when offered through 
the Gospel; but there are many who will heed its call, 
and all these must be brought into touch with it. The 
one necessary point in evangelism—to get the unchurched 
and the Word of God together—is also evangelism’s great- 
est problem. 

In recent years the Church has come to see that her mes- 
sage must be advertised. As the business man advertises 
his wares that the public may be attracted, so must the 
church advertise her services. So far has this advertising 
of church services proceeded that the Associated Adver- 
tising Clubs of the World have a department on church 

170 


CHURCH PUBLICITY 171 


publicity, and in their conventions this department holds 
its own scheduled meetings as a department of the 
organization.’ 


SoME CONSIDERATIONS ON METHOD 


The question is not as to whether the church shall ad- 
vertise but how this advertising shall be done. Different 
kinds of advertising cost varying sums of money and 
some kinds produce little for the amount of money ex- 
pended. They do not justify themselves. A still more 
important question is as to the method used, not as to 
the medium of publicity but as to what. shall be adver- 
tised. For the church can very easily cheapen herself 
in her desire for publicity. Church publicity is per- 
fectly proper as long as it is legitimate, or, to reverse 
the statement, it is perfectly legitimate as long as if is 
proper, and this question of propriety is one great point 
in the subject of publicity. The purpose of the pub- 
licity may also have quite a bearing on the entire question.’ 

There is absolutely no justification for many of the 
methods used for the simple reason that there is no 
justification for such publicity as may simply draw a 
crowd or is designed for merely such a purpose. The 
dignity of the house of God and the sanctity of Chris- 
tian truth forbid many of the things practised for the 





1The writer attended the convention of this organization held 
in Milwaukee, Wis., June, 1922, as a representative of The 
Lutheran and subsequently wrote several articles on Church 
Publicity appearing July-August of that year. 

2He who wishes to investigate methods of church publicity 
may inspect Christian F. Reisner’s book on “Church Advertising” 
and Wm. L. Stidger’s “Standing Room Only,” but they cannot 
be wholly endorsed. 


172 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


sake of church publicity. There is no justification for, 
a positively non-Christian lecturer within the chancel 
nor is it the place for widely known moving picture actors 
and actresses. Were they to bring solid Christian mes- 
sages it would be different; but to feature them to draw 
a crowd cheapens the church. Nor is the church the 
place for magicians, vaudeville performers and “funny 
stunts.” Positively unthinkable is it for the pastor to 
belittle himself by advertising “Something Stunning,” 
only to bound out suddenly into his pulpit platform “ar- 
rayed in the complete garb of an Indian warrior down 
to paint, feathers, tomahawk and war-whoop, amid the 
tumultuous hilarity of the supposed worshipers.” Cold 
the Church dare not be, but carry a dignity commensurate 
with her purpose and character she must. Business- 
like she must be, but her publicity programs and methods 
must be in keeping with the sanctity of her truth. 

The Church is not a theatre, for the staging of all 
sorts of moving pictures, comedy and nonsense.” The 
chancel is not a platform for the exposition of any and 
all sorts of secular questions, open to the propagation of 
every new thing which may come along. The pulpit is 
not an open forum for the debate of all sorts of doubtful 
questions. The church building was built for the ex- 
position of the “evangel’ of God and for His worship. 
“Doubtful disputations” are forbidden to the minister; 





°“Fishing for Fishers of Men,” p. 126. 


“Much might be said on this question of movies in the church. 
With the products of the modern organization in America the 
church can have little to do. Could informative, educational, 
uplifting pictures be had they would prove to be of great value. 
But for mere entertainment they must be taboo; and the usual 
argument is that they “draw the crowd.” 


! 


GCHURGCH PUBLICITY: 173 


they are of doubtful worth, viewed from the mere angle 
of common sense, are seldom of a constructive character, 
and may even leave doubts in their wake. If the staging 
of such things in the church is done for the purpose of 
drawing the crowd, they run counter to the purpose of 
the Church herself, and in the long run they belittle 
her in the public eye. 

Granting that the Church does not demean herself by 
advertising some mere bait, there are mediums for pub- 
licity that must be used with caution. The large display 
card is one of these. These cards may be used to feature 
a College Glee Club or some famous lecturer if a large 
photograph cut of the Glee Club or lecturer is featured 
on the cards. They can be placed into the show win- 
dows of business houses. They are designed for just 
such a feature; they can be used for some outstanding 
event but their use is limited to that one transient pur- 
pose. Even so the display street-car card might do 
little good in such a case. The street-car display card 
produces smaller results for church publicity than any 
other medium. Its use is justified only for some large 
assembly meeting like a Reformation Rally or something 
akin to this. There are very few congregations that 
would be justified in the use of street-car display cards 
for their accustomed services, and the window card is 
limited in use to one event. The cost of such advertising 
is great and it must be used with caution. It 1s feature 
publicity and can be used only with something which 
really can be featured. 

The two mediums of publicity which the Church can 
use to greatest advantage with greatest possible returns 
for the money expended are direct-by-mail and news- 


174 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


paper paid-space. With these two we will deal at some 
length. 


DIRECT-BY-MAIL ADVERTISING 


Direct-by-mail advertising is the sending of literature 
to prospective customers direct by mail. For the church 
it would mean that religious tracts of the denomination 
or of soul-stirring worth, the local parish papers, and 
special literature of the local church, would be mailed , 
to possible prospects. 

The local parish bulletin is found in many parishes. 
In addition to this local congregations frequently put out 
printed cards announcing sermon series for special oc- 
casions or various seasons of the church year. Lent 
should find an attractive lenten folder in the hands of 
every member of the congregation, and these should be 
printed in sufficient quantity that they might be mailed 
to friends by the members of the congregation. Advent 
and Christmas seasons also are times when people in- 
cline more toward church-going than at some other sea- 
sons of the year, and the Church should take advantage 
of any sub-conscious inclination of outsiders to approach 
the house of God. Religion cannot be seasonal; yet it 
is a condition, not a theory which confronts us. The 
plain fact is that during Lent, many of the social doings 
are curbed by restraint, the newspapers print the fact of 
the cessation of social activity, and the general public 
is thereby placed in a frame of mind inclining it the 
more toward church-going. The tendency of all people 
is to ape those higher up in the scale of life; human 
nature is decidedly inclined to social climbing and to im- 
itation. If Christian people are to be as wise as serpents 


GHURCH  PUBLIGITY, 175 


though harmless as doves, they will be quick to take 
advantage of any such frame of mind on the part of the 
general public. 

But direct-by-mail advertising can be done only with 
studied effort. The mind of pastor and people must be 
bent upon it, plans should be laid for it, and some neces- 
sary equipment must be secured. The authorities of the 
local congregation must be sympathetic in order that 
the plan may carry. The plans themselves must be 
definite and specific. There must be a money allowance 
to cover the cost in the budget of the congregation 
for publicity; there must be a designated agency to 
watch for suitable tracts and literature wherever procur- 
able; and if the addresses of such prospects are turned 
into one headquarters by the members of the congre- 
gation, there must be persons especially appointed to 
fold the literature, fill the envelopes and mail out the 
material. The plan itself must determine whether such 
addresses shall be turned in to the one headquarters or 
whether the individual members of the congregation shall 
be allowed to mail out the literature themselves person- 
ally. In the latter case it is frequently never done. The 
equipment required is an addressograph, and if the local 
bulletin is duplicated, instead of printed, an efficient 
duplicating machine.’ 

This method has been used by various congregations 
with considerable success. The weakness has been that 
the sending of such tracts and literature has been left 
to the individuals of the congregation, and the whole 
plan has not been systematized in a definite, orderly, or- 





®Rotary Duplicators or rotating mimeographing machines are 
the best for this purpose. 


176 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


ganized fashion. Many are those who testify that they 
have been converted from the error of their way by a 
printed leaflet; we know very well that there are many 
who have been perverted into error by the same method. 
If “a drop of ink makes millions think,” the value of the 
printed page is evident. The disciples of the ites and 
isms flood the country with their literature, and their 
agents sell our people books by the score. This method 
is good. One congregation for several years has had 
classes of boys from the Sunday school cover the entire 
local territory of the congregation every Saturday leav- 
ing the bulletin for the next day’s services at every 
house. Each boy is given so many blocks of the city tc 
cover, and this work of distribution has been organized 
as a definite plan of that congregation. 


NEWSPAPER ParIp SPACE 


The best and cheapest publicity for the church is the 
newspaper paid space. If the space need not be paic 
for, through the generosity of the local press, so much 
the cheaper. It is best because it enjoys local circula- 
tion, it can be changed at will, it can be inserted when 
desired. The medium is ready at hand and can be reached 
at a moment’s notice. , 

Whether the newspaper space shall be used every 
Saturday through the whole or major part of the year 
may depend upon the amount of money allowed for 
publicity in the treasury of the local congregation, or 
upon other local conditions. It is just possible that as 
good results will be obtained from twice-per-month in- 
sertion or, at other seasons of the year, a once-per-month 
insertion, as to run the “ad” regularly. There is a dif- 


CHURCH PUBLICITY 177 


ference between the advertisement of the merchant and 
the advertisement of the congregation. The merchant 
frequently advertises special features or special prices, 
and the readers of the paper may follow the advertise- 
meuts of the merchants for special bargains. Otherwise 
the advertisements may be much alike; for the merchant 
with a staple line of material advertises to get and keep 
his name before the public. And so far as the psychology 
of the advertising is concerned, the Church will gain more 
by advertising special features than she will by adver- 
tising her regular staple message. 

For this reason the pastors and councilmen of the 
local congregations should pay attention to the news- 
paper paid space for the value of special church seasons, 
for series of sermons, and special occasions as these may 
arise. If the paid space is not used regularly it can be 
used at intervals to good effect. The greater point be- 
hind the occasional use is the fact that when an adver- 
tisement does appear it bears a special message or it sets 
forth something special to draw and hold the attention 
of the readers. It can be worded so that the special 
point is featured, and this featuring process is one great 
advantage in the writing of advertising. A stock adver- 
tisement which never varies its wording will finally become 
stale. The one point above all others to be observed is 
that a few compacted seed thoughts in epigrammatic 
form should be inserted to awaken the mind of him 
who reads. If the space is used regularly every week, 
the special seasons and special occasions should find an 
advertisement of this type. The writing of advertise- 
ments is an art, and the man who uses the church year 
seasons or some special occasions to feature some par- 


178 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


ticular thought must address himself carefully to the 
wording of his “ad” in order that his small allotted space 
shall attract the attention and challenge the thought of 
those who read. 

Some selected examples are given that the thoughts 
above shall become concrete for the reader: 


REFORMATION FESTIVAL 


and 


MASS MEETING 


Mt. Morris Orchestra 7: 00 
Oregon Men’s Choir 72750 


MT. MORRIS, POLO and OREGON 


Hear:tRevinie see Ss 


REFORMATION SERMON- 
LECTURE 


800 Seats 
ST. PAUL’S LUTHERAN CHURCH 
The People’s Popular Church 





A “Feature” advertisement used in a town of small population. 
Rev. Ivan O. Miller, Oregon, Tlinois. 


CHURCH PUBLICITY 179 


J. Richard Olson 


Photograph NAL ey NEL 
cut JOURNALIST. 
of the 
lecturer Special Speaker 
appeared 
ae? at the 
space. MEN’S MEETING 


SUNDAY, 2: 30 


Attractive Music 


SUBJECT: 


“Perils and Possibilities ” 


We trust that tomorrow’s program will 
interest you. 


We have a live Sunday School, graded up 
to the minute. A first-class Bible Class, 
and a class for each of your children. 


SALEM LUTHERAN CHURCH 
A “Feature Ad” with descriptive matter inserted. Original ad- 


vertisement covered 4x6 space. Rev. L. W. Steckel, Albert Lea, 
Minnesota. 


180 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 





ADVENT SEASON 


is here 


Four Sundays preceding Xmas 


CHRIST CAME ONCE 


His coming was prophesied and 


heralded 


Christ Will Come Again 


WHENP?P 

HOWP? Under what conditions? 

What does the Scripture say? 

What does the Scripture meanP 

What does the END meanP 

What must man do between these two 
“comings” P 


THESE VITAL QUESTIONS 
will be answered 


Sunday mornings, 10:30 
December 7,.14 and 21 
at 
HOLY TRINITY LUTHERAN 
CHURCH 
Division and Chapel Streets 





In these days when wild theories on such questions are rife, it 
behooves a solid, evangelical church, to use such as the above. 
Experience has shown that an advertisement such as the above 
will also draw a crowd. 


CHURCH. PUBLICITY 181 





WHAT IS CHRISTMAS?P 


A mere holiday 


For feasting and jollification?P 


or 


A RELIGIOUS HOLY DAY?P 


WHY DO WE HAVE CHRISTMAS? 
WHAT IS ITS ORIGIN?P 
HOW SHALL WE CELEBRATEP 


Go to Church 


Early Christmas Service 


Six o’clock 


Special Music 


HOLY TRINITY LUTHERAN 
CHURCH 


Division and Chapel Streets 





A “seasonal” advertisement the pointed questions of which aim 
at calling humanity back to the fundamentals of life. Among 
the Scandinavians such an advertisement wields great power. 
Our churches should not fail here. 


182 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


NEW YEAR 


Just a wish and a prayer that the New 
Year may bring you, individually, and 
Albert Lea as a whole, joys and blessings 
without number. 


At New Year the mind naturally looks into 
the misty future and seeks to penetrate into 
that which is timeless. 


Practically every thinking person feels 
either the thrill or the awe of the eternal 
at this time of year. 


The Christian is confident of the future 
because he knows the Father’s love and the 
Saviour’s promise. 


SALEM LUTHERAN CHURCH 
Washington and Water Streets 





A “seasonal ad’ of the meditative type. The above can be 
compacted, and worded with pointed questions according to the 
mind of pastor and local conditions. 


CHURCH: PUBLICITY 183 


2 LENT ai 


The great devotional season of the Chris- 

tian Church is here, with its gripping 

themes and its vital messages. It is the 

season for heart searching and consecra- 
tion of life. 


The chief exercise of the season is devo- 

tional, but the contemplation of the sorrows 

and sacrifices of Jesus will stimulate better 
living and greater service. 


If you have no regular Church home 


Come to Salem Church 


Special Lenten Programs 


11: 00 and 7: 30 


SALEM LUTHERAN CHURCH 
Washington and Water Streets 





The original of the above was a 6x9 space advertisement, much 
fuller in material, containing a cut of the church building, and 
announcement of the services. Another Lenten advertisement of 
the same congregation one year later measured 8x11, with sermon 
subjects for morning, evening, midweek, and Passion Week ser- 
vices. 


184 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


There is no need to give further illustrations. On the 
basis of those given above any local pastor may frame a 
paid-space advertisement of services of any character. 
Illustrations are plentiful but the above should suffice. 
The congregation whose budget for publicity is not large 
should begin with the seasonal and special advertise- 
ments. The congregation in the small town will re- 
quire only feature advertisements on special occasions. 
The congregation in the large city can ill afford to insert 
an advertisement as “catchy” or glaring as might be used 
in a place of small population. The congregation in 
some outlying district of a large city is scarcely justified 
at all, or least under limited conditions, in using paid 
space in a metropolitan daily. Such congregations must 
plan on covering their neighborhoods with literature. 
Not located downtown or on some main thoroughfare 
contiguous to the heart of the city, they have difficulty 
in drawing from the entire population. 

One feature of the question of advertising dare not 
be forgotten: Just as the merchant who advertises must 
produce the wares he advertises, so must the congrega- 
tion or pastor fulfill the advertisement. If something 
sensational or catchy is advertised, something sensa- 
tional or catchy is expected by those whom it draws. 
Advertising may prove to be a boomerang if it is not 
honest. 

No circulated medium of church publicity is ever 
intended to take the place of personal activity on the 
part of the individual members of the congregation. It 
is intended only to aid, abet, and inspire the members 
of the congregation that they shall use greater efforts 


CHURCH PUBLICITY 185 


to bring the unchurched to the house of God. The best 
possible medium of publicity any congregation can have 
is an active membership. The people must invite their 
friends and neighbors to the services of the church. They 
must be on the lookout for newcomers who have recently 
moved into their neighborhoods. Congregations should 
be districted. Members should be assigned certain city 
blocks and should ascertain any residential changes in the 
district of which they are in charge, call on the new- 
comers and invite them to church. The laity are all too 
lax in this evangelizing work. If people have the mis- 
sionary spirit and a high desire for the welfare of the 
Church and the souls of men, they will be alert to speak 
the word as God’s evangelizing agents. They will up- 
hold the Church as God’s lone institution established for 
the salvation of souls. They will themselves be faith- 
ful, will walk circumspectly in the life of faith as walk- 
ing epistles known and read of all men, and their Chris- 
tian life will enforce their plea to others. The paid- 
space advertisement or any other medium for publicity 
will inspire them to greater efforts; they will take pride 
and joy in the fact that their own congregation stands 
in and before the public eye. The finest result of the 
advertising is that it inspires the people of the congre- 
gation to greater zeal for the Kingdom. If it fails in 
this, it fails utterly, but in this it seldom fails. Although 
there can be no such paradoxical thing as a mere parochial 
vision, the Gospel is preached in the local congregation, 
and the local congregation is the unit for evangelizing 
work. Any zeal for the Kingdom must begin at the 
local Jerusalem where Christianity began. Thence it 
must reach to the uttermost parts of the earth but it 


186 SCRIPTURAL EVANGELISM 


will never reach if it never begins. Individual souls 
must be brought by individual souls to hear the Gospel 
preaching in this local unit of the Universal Kingdom. 
Church publicity must aim at this evangelizing purpose. 





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